Fury-Whyte: WBC Sets February 21 Deadline For Both To Submit Signed Contracts For Title Fight

The WBC put Dillian Whyte on the clock Tuesday.

Four days after Frank Warren submitted a whopping winning bid of $41,025,000 to earn the right to co-promote a Tyson Fury-Dillian Whyte WBC heavyweight title fight along with Bob Arum’s Top Rank Inc., handlers for the two British boxers were informed by the WBC that they have until the end of business February 21 to submit signed contracts. Warren’s Queensberry Promotions and Top Rank tentatively have set aside April 23 as the date for Fury-Whyte and are considering several venues in the United Kingdom.

Whyte wants more than the 80-20 split that the WBC determined was fair for their fight last month. Championship matches mandated by the WBC typically afford champions a 70-30 advantage in purse splits.

Based on an 80-20 split and 10 percent of the winning bid being set aside as a win bonus, Fury is entitled to $29,538,000 of the remaining $36,922,500 because he is the defending champion. Whyte would earn $7,384,500 from what’s left of the winning bid as the WBC’s mandatory challenger.

An additional $4,102,500 would be left in escrow for whoever wins the 12-round pay-per-view bout between the 33-year-old Fury (31-0-1, 22 KOs) and the 34-year-old Whyte (28-2, 19 KOs).

Fury is believed to be more than willing to accept the terms set forth by the WBC and sign a contract. The London-based, Jamaican-born Whyte hasn’t commented publicly since Warren’s historic bid submission Friday.

Warren’s winning bid, which was funded in conjunction with Top Rank, was almost $9 million more than Eddie Hearn’s Matchroom Boxing offered for this high-profile fight between polarizing British heavyweights. Matchroom, which works with Whyte, submitted a bid of $32,222,222 as part of a process that was conducted virtually from the WBC’s headquarters in Mexico City.

Queensberry and Top Rank offered an enormous amount of money to win the bid because Arum and Warren didn’t want their most valuable, visible boxer to compete on platforms other than ESPN (Top Rank) and BT Sport (Queensberry), even for one fight.

Matchroom and DAZN, a worldwide streaming service, also are partners. It would’ve been considered a noteworthy win, at least in terms of public perception, for DAZN and Matchroom if those companies had secured the worldwide rights to Fury-Whyte.

Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.