Former WBO cruiserweight champion and Sky Sports pundit, Johnny Nelson, believes veteran trainer Mark Tibbs would have been very useful had Dillian Whyte used him in the corner last month.

Whyte had unexpectedly parted ways with Tibbs in the weeks leading up to clash with Alexander Povetkin.

After controlling the fight and dropping Povetkin twice in the fourth, Whyte was knocked out cold by a huge uppercut in the fifth round.

The split shocked many on the UK scene, as Whyte and Tibbs had worked together for four years.

Tibbs had told BoxingScene.com that Whyte blindsided him by cutting off all communications. The trainer found out he was being replaced when Whyte's lawyer advised him to have no further contact with the boxer.

Whyte claimed that his preference to train out in Portugal was the main reason for splitting with Tibbs.

Tibbs does not necessarily agree with Whyte's reasoning for replacing him. He believes there is more to the story.

Whyte brought in a new head coach in Xavier Miller. In the days leading up to the fight, it was revealed that Dave Coldwell was added to the corner as well.

“To my knowledge, Mark Tibbs has a family and has his own gym to run. So if he's going to spend three months out in Portugal training Dillian, that means everything else suffers,” Nelson told Daily Star Sport.

“If you love your sport, you've got to make sacrifices. But he could have been thinking, 'Do you know what, I can't sacrifice all this time.' That's how I understand it, that's how I read it. But would [Tibbs being there] have made a difference? Yes.

“I think that's why Dave Coldwell was brought in as a second pair of eyes for the chief cornerman, because the chief cornerman obviously wasn't confident enough to navigate Dillian through such a high-stakes fight.

“So again, I think Dillian's the kind of guy that will fight anyone anywhere, but you need a strategy from your corner. Someone telling you when to back off, someone telling you when to step it on. That's the difference I think Mark Tibbs would have made.”

Whyte will face Povetkin in a rematch on November 21.