Veteran Dillian Whyte says he is capable of pulling off a surprise against his fellow Briton Moses Itauma, the bright young star of heavyweight boxing being lined up to take on Oleksandr Usyk.<\/p>\n
Whyte and Itauma are due to fight in Riyadh on 16 August. Itauma, aged 20, little more than half the age of the 37-year-old Whyte, has racked up a flawless 12-0 record in his professional career that has spanned just over two years.<\/p>\n
Turki Alalshikh, the chairman of the General Entertainment Authority, which owns Riyadh Season, has said he would like to make Itauma face the undisputed world heavyweight champion Usyk next. Many pundits and former professionals say Itauma will be the next man to rule over the division, and see the Whyte fight as a stepping stone.<\/p>\n
Whyte said there was a lot of excitement around Itauma, but added: \u201cWe\u2019ve seen it time and time again where these guys are built up, they\u2019re knocking everybody out, they\u2019re prospects and stuff. We have to see what happens.<\/p>\n
\u201cSometimes these guys get rushed, or sometimes they get blown out of proportion and then things go wrong. It\u2019s heavyweight boxing. Heavyweight boxing \u2026 it\u2019s unpredictable. I\u2019ve always taken the most dangerous fight and the hardest fight there is.\u201d<\/p>\n
Whyte denied he was fazed by the speculation about the fight. \u201cI don\u2019t feel disrespected. In life, everybody\u2019s got an opinion. Everybody\u2019s going to say something. He\u2019s been in the limelight, he\u2019s the new man, he\u2019s shining, he\u2019s knocking everyone out \u2026 there\u2019s excitement about him.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople\u2019s memories are short in boxing. You remember a few years ago when David Haye fought Carl Thompson, Carl Thompson was just a danger man that was in the wilderness. No one cared about Carl Thompson. David Haye was blowing everyone away, smashing everyone\u2019s heads in. And then, look, Carl Thompson showed up and got the job done.\u201d<\/p>\n
Moses Itauma has a flawless 12-0 record and is being lined up to take on Oleksandr Usyk. Photograph: Andrew Couldridge\/Action Images\/Reuters<\/p>\n
Whyte was knocked out by Tyson Fury at Wembley in April 2022 after being the WBC number one contender for more than four years. A rematch with Anthony Joshua was cancelled in August 2023 after an adverse finding in one of Whyte\u2019s drugs tests.<\/p>\n
After 15 months out of the ring he won a contentious decision victory over Jermaine Franklin in March 2024. He fought a further two times in 2024 against Christian Hammer and Ebenezer Tetteh, respectively, two fights in which Whyte did not impress, showing levels that were far off the heights he had shown in victories such as the one against current WBO mandatory challenger, Joseph Parker.<\/p>\n
skip past newsletter promotion<\/a><\/p>\n The best of our sports journalism from the past seven days and a heads-up on the weekend\u2019s action<\/p>\n Privacy Notice: <\/strong>Newsletters may contain info about charities, online ads, and content funded by outside parties. For more information see our Privacy Policy<\/a>. We use Google reCaptcha to protect our website and the Google Privacy Policy<\/a> and Terms of Service<\/a> apply.<\/p>\n after newsletter promotion<\/p>\n A win for Whyte would revive his career and could potentially lead to a rematch with Joshua or Derek Chisora. Otherwise retirement may loom.<\/p>\n Whyte was in a reflective mood when he met reporters, discussing his tough childhood in Brixton, south London. \u201cSometimes I had no guardians or no one to take care of me. So I was out in the street surviving, stealing and robbing food and stuff to get by, eating from trash cans, doing stuff like that. You know, working as a kid, I remember selling Fanta bottles, the glass bottles to make money, selling fruits, farming, doing stuff. So, I\u2019ve been suffering.<\/p>\n \u201cAll I\u2019ve done in my life is fight and struggle, fight and struggle, fight and struggle, fight and struggle, fight and struggle. So it\u2019s what I know how to do. I\u2019ve had to learn to be a better human being.\u201d<\/p>\n He added: \u201cBut fighting \u2026 and being amongst animals, are the two things that I know to do best.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Veteran Dillian Whyte says he is capable of pulling off a surprise against his fellow Briton Moses Itauma,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":307367,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[1935,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-307366","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114949553105027292","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307366","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307366"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307366\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/307367"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307366"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307366"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307366"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}