Tyson Fury has been told Dillian Whyte is not fighting him for a pay check and is more interested in winning his first world title.
Fury defends his WBC title against interim champion Whyte next weekend at Wembley Stadium. A record 94,000 fans will be in attendance as Britain hosts its first all domestic heavyweight title clash for the first time in almost 30 years.
Whyte is set to the biggest purse of his career, £6million, after Frank Warren and Bob Arum landed a massive £31million bid to host the fight. Fury will earn at least £25million, but both fighters purses will be boosted depending on the success of pay-per-view sales.
Former two-weight champion David Haye thinks Whyte's reluctance to promote the fight shows how serious he is training. 'The Bodysnatcher' has been preparing in Portugal and has avoided doing any interviews other than what he is contractually obligated to do.
Can Dillian Whyte hand Tyson Fury his first professional loss? Let us know your prediction in the comments section below
“He’s not picking up a pay check, he’s coming here to win," Haye said. "If he was about the pay check, he’d be at the press conferences trying to hype up the numbers because he’d get some of the upside, he doesn’t care. He’s getting enough money for the fight and wants to just focus on training.
"A lot of people gave him stick for not coming to participate in the pre-fight press conference, he wasn’t contractually obligated to do so. The fact that he wasn’t bothered to come and would rather spend time training shows how serious he is about his preparations.
"He wants to be tip-top. What I got from it is he’d rather spend another three or four days to focus on training camp, than interrupting his training, getting on a flight and talking to the press to get another half a million or million maybe."
Haye has come under fire from John Fury for predicting that Whyte will upset the odds and beat Tyson. John warned BT Sport there will be a "problem" if Haye is on commentary duties for the domestic clash.
It's not the first time Haye has picked against Fury, previously backing Deontay Wilder to beat him in their trilogy last October. 'The Hayemaker' thinks the best version of Whyte will show up next weekend, stating: "I think we’re going to see the most motivated Dillian Whyte ever, the bigger the opposition the better he seems to turn up."
BT Sport Box Office will show Fury v Whyte exclusively live on Saturday, April 23 from 6pm. For more information go to bt.com/sportboxoffice
