Dillian Whyte has had it with John Fury.
The long-suffering heavyweight contender Whyte did not appreciate how the churlish father of WBC titlist Tyson Fury tried to cause a disturbance Wednesday during the face-off between his son and Whyte. The elder Fury was seen goading Whyte and Whyte’s team before tempers cooled and the fighters were able to go on with the face-off. The two British countrymen are scheduled to swap punches in their high anticipated title bout this Saturday at Wembley Stadium in London, where 94,000 spectators are expected to gather.
Whyte fumed afterward, saying Fury’s father was out of line. Admittedly, John Fury, a former bare-knuckle fighter from Manchester who was once jailed for gouging out someone's eye, is no stranger to making public outbursts.
“Tyson Fury’s dad’s an idiot,” Whyte told IFL TV. “Even Tyson had looked at him, shook his head and walked off, ‘Dad what are you doing?’ Like, bro, relax, you’re 100 years old. You’re stepping forward [to me].”
Whyte sniped at John Fury for presumably never following through with an ad-hoc street fight proposed by a British bodybuilder, Mickey Theo, a few years ago. Whyte also said that if the elder Fury is so eager to fight, he is welcome to take on Whyte’s own father.
“He’s hoping to go to war on the stage, but he’s not hoping to go fight Micky Theo,” Whyte said. “Sh!t, Mickey Theo [went] to Manchester looking for him. He should go and fight him.
“If he wants, he (John Fury) can fight my dad. John Fury can fight my dad. My dad’s up for a free fight with him. If John Fury wants, he can fight my dad, and my dad’s older than him. He can have a free fight with him. Not boxing, he can have a bareknuckle free fight with him. Anytime, anywhere. If he wants it now…my dad will bash him in. Smash him to bits. Straight."
“He’s always talking,” Whyte continued. “Let’s see if he’s gonna man up and accept the challenge. I’m fighting his son, he can fight my dad.”
The 34-year-old Whyte (28-2, 19 KOs) last fought in March 2021, scoring a fourth-round technical knockout of Alexander Povetkin at Europa Point Sports Complex in Gibraltar. The win was a rematch of Whyte’s shocking upset loss to Povetkin in August 2020 in which Povetkin overcame a pair of early knockdowns to stop Whyte in the fifth.
The 33-year-old Fury (31-0-1, 22 KOs) is coming off one of the best fights of 2021, a barnburner with hard-hitting Alabaman heavyweight Deontay Wilder. The trilogy match at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas ended with Fury delivering an 11th-round stoppage.
