Fury to defend world title in the UK against Whyte

TySON FURy will defend his WBC world heavyweight title against Dillian Whyte in a UK homecoming fight this April.

The Gypsy King’s trans-Atlantic promotional partners, Frank Warren and Bob Arum, won yesterday’s purse bid in Mexico City with an offer of $42million.

This dwarfed by $11m the bid from Eddie Hearn, who had hoped to snatch the rights with ‘an offer reflecting the true value of the fight’.

The winning bid also saves Team Fury the total £20.5m they were prepared to pay Anthony Joshua and Whyte between them to step aside to allow the Gypsy King to fight Oleksandr Usyk for the undisputed world heavyweight championship.

Joshua, who could have made a second financial killing by challenging the winner of that fight later this year, will now enact his contractual right to a rematch against Usyk, which is expected to take place in London in May.

Wembley, Cardiff and Fury’s home town of Manchester — possibly Old Trafford — are in the running to stage his fight with Whyte.

Warren — in refuting Hearn’s claim that Fury had backed out of fighting Usyk — asserted that negotiations crashed when Joshua ‘suddenly demanded an extra £5m on top of his agreed £15m to step aside.

That prompted Fury to lambast Joshua and Hearn as ‘the worst businessmen in the world’.

Whyte also stands to lose out to some extent financially, given the WBC have ordered a purse split of 80/20 per cent in favour of Fury as champion. That is unlikely to vary much, if at all.

Hopes of a long anticipated fight between Fury and Joshua will recede further if AJ loses to Usyk a second time.