Dillian Whyte has played down Tyson Fury’s ability to play mind games, saying the WBC heavyweight champion’s “mouth is like a toilet”.
Whyte refused to attend the first pre-fight press conference last month ahead of his title shot against Fury this Saturday, though the challenger finally broke a long period of social-media silence last week.
Now, the 34-year-old Whyte has spoken to The Independent columnist Steve Bunce in an interview with BT Sport, opening up on his decision to snub the press conference and the chance to go face-to-face with Fury.
“I don’t regret anything really, because I’m a professional, I’m a top guy,” Whyte said. “This isn’t the Tyson Fury show; this is the Tyson Fury and Dillan Whyte show.
“From where I stand, it’s the Dillian Whyte and Tyson Fury show – but from where he stands, it’s the Fury-Whyte show.
“He’s heavyweight champion, so I understand what they’re doing, saying, whatever. But you can’t buy a high-performance car and not put high-performance fuel in it, and that’s what they’re trying to do.
“They won the [purse bid], they’re trying to treat me like nothing. They don’t want to pay anything, they don’t want to look after things properly. They wanted to just say: ‘Well, we won the fight, you have to do what we say.’
“No, I don’t have to do what you say. I am my own man, I do what I want to do. Unless you want to play ball right and do the things properly, and sit there with my team and work stuff out... Even today, now, last minute, they’re trying to work stuff out now.”
Whyte, who last fought in March 2021 when he knocked out Alexander Povetkin, insisted that he was not surprised by the tactics of Fury’s team.
“It ain’t shocked me and it ain’t disappointed me,” he said, “because I’ve been around boxing a long time. and with Tyson Fury, you have to expect everything.
“This is a man that’s weighed in and pulled out of a fight on the day of the fight [...] It’s a man that pulled out of the [Wladimir] Klitschko [rematch].
“People forget that Tyson Fury didn’t turn up to the Wladimir Klitschko press conference. Everyone’s giving me stick, and he was contractually obliged to go to that – I wasn’t contractually obliged to go to any press conference.
“I don’t care what Tyson Fury says, he says a lot of s***. His mouth’s like a toilet, he just keeps flushing and flushing and flushing and flushing. He just flushes any kind of random s*** that comes out of his mouth.
“Me and him are gonna have a fight regardless, so I don’t care about mind games. I’m a fighter, I’m a warrior. If he wants it – any time, anywhere – I’m down. I don’t give a f*** about this, that and the other.
“He can’t get in my head. Even if he gets in my head, he’s only gonna find a lot of disturbance in there.”
BT Sport Box Office will show Fury vs Whyte exclusively live on Saturday 23 April from 6pm BST. For more information go to bt.com/sportboxoffice
