Initially, it looked like another huge blow to Whyte’s hopes of finally landing a world title shot, but ‘The Body Snatcher’ has seemingly been given a reprieve with the WBC set to rule that his withdrawal has not affected his status as the no 1 contender.
Champion Fury, who last month came through his epic trilogy fight with Deontay Wilder in Las Vegas, is expected to be ordered to start negotiating an all-British clash with Whyte for early 2022.
And the father of ‘The Gypsy King’ has dismissed Whyte’s injury claims, instead crediting himself for the fight – that was due to take place at the O2 Arena on October 30 – being called off.
John had initially said that taking on Wallin was risky for Whyte, given if he lost it would scupper his chances of finally getting the title chance he craves.
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“Dillian Whyte has pulled out from Otto Wallin. You know why? He listened to what I said,” Fury, 57, told BT Sport.
“He’s thought: ‘Hang on a minute, John knows his stuff, I’m not fighting Wallin. I’m going to get turned over probably, I won’t get my title shot then.’
“It takes them to listen to my videos, and then he hears me talking about Wallin, because Wallin is a danger to anybody.
“He thought: ‘I’m not having that smoke, I’ll wait, I’ll wait.’ Let’s just see what he’s waiting for.”
Indeed, the Fury’s themselves know all about the potential of Wallin, 30.
He went the distance with the Manchester man in September 2019, a bout that ended with a unanimous decision in favour of the British fighter, but only after he had to nurse a nasty cut above his eye for much of the night after Wallin struck him early on.
Whyte has long sought a bout with Fury though, and on his Twitter page, his pinned post remains a tweet from June 2020 that labels his rival a coward and references his claims he once knocked him out in sparring.
The Brixton man was mandatory challenger then but in August that year, he suffered a setback when he was knocked out by Russian fighter Alexander Povetkin.