Dillian Whyte didn’t need to be a part of the promotion for his challenge of lineal/WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury in order to fill up Wembley Stadium.

All that was needed was for the long-reigning top heavyweight contender to appear on the other side of the marquee.

“This is business,” Whyte stated in explaining his chosen media blackout prior to a Zoom conference call to discuss his April 23 pay-per-view main event with Fury. “This is not the Tyson Fury show. Everyone is saying, Tyson Fury this, Tyson Fury that. He didn’t sell out any of the fights with Deontay Wilder. That’s a fact. The fights were never sold out. This is not the Tyson Fury show. This fight sold out because of me and Tyson Fury.

“Tyson Fury fought Deontay Wilder, this big superstar and none of those fights sold out. It’s not just the Tyson Fury show. It’s the Tyson Fury and Dillian Whyte show. We’re both in the show together. Things need to be done correctly.”

With that came more than two months of silence from Whyte (28-2, 19KOs)—a Jamaica-born heavyweight now based out of Brixton, England—following Fury’s co-promoter, Frank Warren’s Queensberry Promotions securing the rights to the lineal/WBC championship fight following a record bid of $41,025,000 in late January. Whyte waited until hours before the imposed deadline to submit a signed bout agreement before remaining isolated in training camp.

The move included his skipping out on a March 1 press conference in London to formally announce the event, which takes place April 23 on BT Sport Box Office and ESPN+ Pay-Per-View from Wembley Stadium in London. Fury and the Queensberry staff were forced to hold down the press conference on their own, with Whyte not having anything at all to say about the fight prior to participating in the Zoom media conference call eight days from the event.

His only obligation to that point, as Whyte sees it, was to put pen to paper that he would be there on fight night.

“You know in this boxing game, signing a paper doesn’t make it the end of the deal,” pointed out Whyte, who has not fought since a fourth-round stoppage of Alexander Povetkin last March, avenging a knockout loss to the Russian heavyweight in their August 2020 encounter. “In this boxing game, you make an agreement, you sign something to get the ball rolling. But there are still underlying issues to get secured and sort out.

“So, while they’re messing around and trying to play games, you can control only what you can control. I can control my actions. Not what Fury does, not what Frank Warren or BT Sport does. That’s the simple fact of the matter. This boxing game, people only hear one side of the story. Tyson Fury likes to stand up and shout but they’re not telling the whole story.  It’s very hard to clap with one hand. You need two hands to clap.”

Manchester’s Fury (31-0-1, 22KOs)—a two-time and reigning lineal heavyweight champion—attempts the second defense of the WBC title he claimed in a seventh-round stoppage of Deontay Wilder in their February 2020 rematch. His lone fight since then came last October, when he survived two knockdowns to floor Wilder three times en route to an eleventh-round knockout at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas. The epic heavyweight clash was recognized by BoxingScenec.com and several other outlets as the 2021 Fight of the Year.

The title defense versus Whyte will mark the first fight of any kind in the United Kingdom for Fury since August 2018, the second fight of his comeback when he outpointed Francisco Pianeta over ten rounds in Belfast. Five fights have followed, all in the United States including his trilogy with Wilder, beginning with their December 2018 twelve-round draw in Los Angeles.

Jake Donovan is a senior writer for BoxingScene.com. Twitter: @JakeNDaBox