Izuchukwu Okosi
The much touted grudge fight between Tyson Fury and Dillan Whyte is tentatively slated to be held on April 23 this year.
Join our WhatsApp ChannelFrank Warren and Bob Arum won Friday’s purse bid in Mexico City with a £30million offer.
The official date and location is expected to be made public next week according to The Sun.
Cardiff’s Principality Stadium is seen as the most likely venue to hold the fight because it has a retractable roof.
Wembley and Fury’s home of Manchester – possibly Old Trafford – are in also in the running to stage his showdown with Whyte.
There had been a number of deadlines to agree the clash between the two heavyweights, with the purse bid instructed for last week Friday if the final deadline was not met.
The offer from Warren and Arum dwarfed that of Eddie Hearn, who had hoped to snatch the rights with ‘an offer reflecting the true value of the fight.’
The winning bid also saved Team Fury the total £20.5 million they were prepared to pay Anthony Joshua and Whyte between them to step aside to allow the Gypsy King to fight AJ’s conqueror Oleksandr Usyk for the undisputed world heavyweight championship.
British born Nigerian 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.
Warren – in refuting Hearn’s claim that Fury had backed out of fighting Usyk first and foremost – asserted that negotiations crashed when Joshua ‘suddenly demanded’ an extra £5 million on top of his agreed £15 million to step aside.
That prompted Fury to lambast Joshua and Hearn as ‘the worst businessmen in the world.’
Izuchukwu Okosi is a Nigerian sports and entertainment journalist with two decades of experience in the media industry having begun his media journey in 2002 as an intern at Mundial Sports International (MSI) and Africa Independent Television (AIT), owners of Daar Communications Plc.
