{"id":283232,"date":"2025-11-25T22:02:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-25T22:02:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/283232\/"},"modified":"2025-11-25T22:02:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-25T22:02:10","slug":"dillian-whyte-offered-lawrence-okolie-fight-dec-19-in-nigeria","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/283232\/","title":{"rendered":"Dillian Whyte offered Lawrence Okolie fight Dec. 19 in Nigeria"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dillian Whyte<\/a> has been offered the opportunity to reignite his career and settle his long running grudge with Lawrence Okolie<\/a>.
Okolie will headline a December 19 card in Lagos, Nigeria<\/a>. The show is a joint promotion between his promoters, Queensberry, Amir Khan\u2019s AK Promotions and Balmoral Group Promotions.
CEO of AK Promotions, Khan, told The Ring<\/a> that he has offered Whyte the opportunity to face his bitter rival in an all-British heavyweight clash. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve offered Dillian Whyte the fight with Lawrence Okolie,\u201d Khan said. <\/p>\n

“There\u2019s bad blood between the pair of them and it is a fight fans around the world have been calling for for a very long time. Lawrence is ranked No. 1 with the WBC. Dillian was chasing that belt down for years. We\u2019re offering him a lifeline, a last shot to become world champion. We\u2019ve made a very strong offer for him to fight Okolie and we hope he\u2019ll accept the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n

Two weight world champion, Okolie (22-1, 16 KOs), and Whyte (31-4, 21 KOs) have been embroiled in nasty feud since Okolie\u2019s days as a cruiserweight prospect.<\/p>\n

The two have shared sparring videos and traded insults but have always competed in different weight divisions. <\/p>\n

The fight became a serious proposition last December when Okolie got his heavyweight campaign off to an electrifying start with a first round stoppage of Germany’s Hussein Muhamed.<\/p>\n

In July he comfortably outpointed Kevin Lerena over 10 rounds<\/a> despite suffering an early torn bicep and sits at No.1 in the WBC rankings, just behind interim champion, Agit Kabayel.
With The Ring\u2019s No. 3-ranked heavyweight, Kabayel, set to fight Poland\u2019s Damian Kynba<\/a> in Oberhausen, Germany on January 10, Okolie clearly sees this as the ideal time for he and Whyte to finally settle their differences. <\/p>\n

\u201cDillian Whyte needs to accept that he\u2019s a journeyman\/gatekeeper now,\u201d Okolie said. \u201cThat\u2019s his role. He needs to play it or retire.\u201d<\/p>\n

Whyte has boxed just four times since being stopped in the sixth round of a challenge for Tyson Fury\u2019s WBC heavyweight title in April 2022. In his only appearance of 2025, he was taken out inside a round by Moses Itauma<\/a> in August.<\/p>\n

Whyte had been heavily linked to a December 13 trilogy fight with Derek Chisora but with that card now cancelled, the 37-year-old may find the chance to take Okolie\u2019s ranking with the WBC as too tempting to turn down. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve made an offer for Dillian Whyte to fight Okolie as we continue our momentum of bringing the best of the best to Africa as we continue our drive to build the next generation of superstars here,\u201d CEO of Balmoral Group Promotions, Dr Ezekiel Adamu, said. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe are waiting to hear back from his team as to whether he will accept the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dillian Whyte has been offered the opportunity to reignite his career and settle his long running grudge with…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":283233,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,6842,6836,6841,6840,6834,6102,6837,6838,6839,6835,6588,6847,6846,6830,6828,6829,6844,6831,6827,6848,6843,101,6845,6826,6833,56,54,55,6832],"class_list":["post-283232","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-boxing-community","tag-boxing-fights","tag-boxing-history","tag-boxing-interviews","tag-boxing-magazine","tag-boxing-news","tag-boxing-photos","tag-boxing-rankings","tag-boxing-schedule","tag-boxing-videos","tag-boxing-results","tag-disqualification","tag-draw","tag-fight","tag-fighter","tag-fighter-news","tag-knockout","tag-latest-boxing-matches","tag-ring","tag-ring-magazine","tag-split-decision","tag-sports","tag-technical-knockout","tag-the-ring","tag-top-fighters","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-upcoming-boxing-matches"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283232","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283232"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283232\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283233"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283232"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283232"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283232"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}