Boxtune wrote: ↑09 Jul 2021, 09:55I remember Whyte Turned down fight against Ortiz and Pulev with some lame excuse ...
On the 25th April 2018, the WBC officially ordered the final eliminator between Luis Ortiz and Dillian Whyte.
The winner of this fight would acquire secondary mandatory challenger status (second in the queue to face Deontay Wilder, behind Dominic Breazeale - a man with a worse WBC ranking than Dillian Whyte).
Dillian Whyte refused to engage in the WBC final eliminator, because he had previously competed in a WBC eliminator against Dereck Chisora, had captured and successfully defended the WBC silver title twice and had been their highest-ranked title challenger for roughly one year.
Even though Dillian Whyte refused to participate in the WBC’s final eliminator, Eddie Hearn still tried to make the Luis Ortiz fight.
The Cuban allegedly declined the opportunity to face Dillian Whyte on the 28th July 2018, which was accompanied with a two million dollar purse offer, because he claimed the scheduled fight-date was too soon for him. However, Ortiz actually ended up fighting on that date anyway, when he engaged in the preposterous Razvan Cojanu mismatch.
Meanwhile, Dillian Whyte had to find an alternative opponent for his 28th July bout, so he chose to face an even better fighter instead, Joseph Parker (as per ESPN's & The RING's ratings).
Around the same timeframe, Dillian Whyte also rejected the opportunity to compete in an IBF final eliminator, against Kubrat Pulev, because he was only receiving a 25% purse split to compete on the Bulgarian’s home turf, which equated to a paltry $375K (as per the purse bid won by Epic Sports & Entertainment). The Bulgarian was being paid three times more than the Brit’s sum.
Kubrat Pulev ended up facing Hughie Fury in the IBF’s final eliminator, whereas Dillian Whyte fought Joseph Parker instead, with both the Brit & the Kiwi pocketing slightly more than $1.3m each.