I reckon Whyte beats the AJ before the loss, and the AJ after the loss. I genuinely believe, the shots Whyte hurt Rivas with would have hurt Joshua more, and Joshua would not have avoided the left hook as illusively as Rivas. Only a select few fighters could avoid the hook the way Rivas and Chisora were doing, being shorter fighters.
Possibly, Rivas certainly seems to have decent whiskers. AJ mostly did a pretty good job of avoiding Wlad's left hook and he knows that's Whyte's signature shot, so you'd at least hope they'd prepare for it a little.
They certainly would prepare for it, I just believed Whyte when he said "You can try train for my left hook but it won't matter" and for the most part it is true, he does lands it well at some point... as he has continued to work on it......but Rivas did a splendid job of avoiding it all night... really kudos to his team and trainer as they clearly trained to avoid it. But I doubt many others can do the same, especially robotic AJ. Regardless, we know it would be an exciting fight.
Off the top of my head, Michael Alexander is one that sticks out in answering your question. He's the one out of them all who i reckon would let the inside work go on. He's with ibf as well so he could ref the ruiz rematch, but we are talking Anthony Joshua here any British ref/judge is going to side with A.J. But in normal circumstances, Alexander is good at letting u work inside.
One thing I just remembered about this fight... Was sat next to a guy who knows Dillian Whyte through Loughborough and got free tickets through him. He mentioned training hadn’t gone well for this fight and seemed concerned. If that is the case it was an even more impressive win.
Whyte mentioned that he had an awful camp and he looked to be carrying extra timber so yes, it makes the win more impressive. It was a good solid win and performance bar the knockdown.
I thought this was an interesting article. [url]https://www.*****.net/2019/07/25/russ-anber-whyte-rivas-gloves/[/url] The bit that stuck out for me was Rivas’s cornerman Russ Anber saying... ‘Another thing we weren’t happy with was that the referee was all over Rivas the whole fight. Every little infraction he was told: ‘don’t do this or don’t do that’, whereas if Dillian did something it passed. All the borderline stuff was called for Rivas, but not for Dillian. I’ve spent most of my years in boxing on the road – hell, my fighter Otis Grant, who I took from the amateurs to the world title, was known as a road warrior and had to beat Ryan Rhodes in Sheffield to win the WBO title. So I know the score; no one travels wanting any special favours, you just want a level playing field – but time and time again you see situations all over the world where the rules are applied differently for the home fighter and the away fighter or for the ‘A side’ as opposed to the ‘B side’. We saw it recently with Gennady Golovkin and Steve Rolls in New York. It’s not right and unless someone speaks out about it nothing will change. Anyway, that’s my rant for today’! Now, me and a couple of other posters pointed this out the day after. I believe it’s absolutely relevant. Away (or B-side) fighters are not getting a fair crack of the whip with the referees and judges. Victor Loughlin took all the momentum away from Rivas particularly in that 12th round. It’s getting embarrassing...Whyte was getting a lot of favouritism in the Rivas fight and the Chisora fight imo. We saw Joshua get a lot of favouritism in the Parker fight. Enough is enough, the judging is bad enough but refs have to be consistent.
It kind off gets to the stage where you can't be arsed to watch it, why pay for something that isn't what it says it is. I spend a fair bit off time watching Amateur football with my son because its real and I look forward to the day where I can watch him play even if its a game in the park as a kick around. I didn't buy the Whyte PPV and haven't bought one for a good while, I watch the UFC stuff occasionally and BT sport and box nations free stuff and more recently ONE FC on youtube FREE that does it for me.
The referee in the Whyte Parker fight was utterly atrocious. That’s boxing though and it isn’t going to change unfortunately. It’s been happening for donkeys years, people just suddenly think this a new thing.
And what are my varying opinions on Whyte? I was corrected yesterday on the usage of elusive vs illusive. I figured I would start all this drama today by replying to myself, because it will help me remember the word for future use. Whole thing is working like a charm. Elusive.
