Dillian Whyte: There is no reason Deontay Wilder shouldn’t fight me

Coming off of a destructive knockout win over Lucas Browne on Saturday, top-ranked WBC heavyweight contender Dillian Whyte says he’s ready to sit down with titleholder Deontay Wilder and hash out the terms for a fight, which in his mind could come as soon as June.

“I will sit down and talk to him. I am civilised. I know people think I am an animal but I will sit down and talk to him. There is no reason why he shouldn’t take a fight with me. I am offering him career high purses and it is going to be a good fight. We are going to fill arenas. He has struggled to fill arenas in his hometown. I am not world champion but I packed out the O2.”

Wilder (40-0, 39 KO), who last fought on March 3 with a dramatic victory over Luis Ortiz, may be willing to travel to the United Kingdom to face fellow titleholder and top draw Anthony Joshua (who fights this weekend against Joseph Parker), but whether or not he’d do that to face Whyte (23-1, 17 KO) is another story.

But the idea that Wilder struggles to draw is overstated at this point. While the fight would certainly draw its biggest crowd in the UK, where Whyte has some name value, boxing is hot, and fans would line up to see Wilder come over and defend, perhaps ahead of a Joshua unification, WIlder did draw over 14,000 to Brooklyn’s Barclays Center for the Ortiz fight, and it’s not like Ortiz is a star with a big fan base.

As for Whyte, he says he’s also willing to rematch Joshua, who handed him his only pro loss in 2015, but considers Wilder “probably the easier to beat out of the two.”