{"id":694830,"date":"2026-07-16T12:58:11","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T12:58:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/694830\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T12:58:11","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T12:58:11","slug":"ben-whittaker-in-advanced-negotiations-to-fight-no-2-ranked-fighter-to-set-up-world-title-shot","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/694830\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Whittaker in &#8216;advanced negotiations&#8217; to fight No 2 ranked fighter to set up world title shot"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>British light-heavyweight <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnewsonline.net\/boxer\/ben-whittaker\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Ben Whittaker<\/a> has garnered a big following throughout his professional career and now the West Bromwich contender looks poised to soon challenge for world honours.<\/p>\n<p>Whittaker has fought on 13 occasions since his 2022 debut and the Tokyo 2020 Olympic silver medallist has captured global attention through his personality, his showboating, but more importantly, his talent.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Now, despite picking up the WBC Silver light-heavyweight title when ticking off the milestone of a US debut with an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/sport\/boxing\/articles\/cx2vdzdgg8yo\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">early stoppage of Richard Rivera last month<\/a>, Whittaker appears to have selected the IBF as his preferred route towards the 175lb crown.<\/p>\n<p>According to <a href=\"https:\/\/talksport.com\/boxing\/4415999\/ben-whittaker-advanced-negotiations-world-title-eliminator-conor-wallace\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener nofollow\">talkSPORT<\/a>, Whittaker is currently \u2018in advanced negotiations\u2019 for an event which would see him headline the Utilita Arena in Birmingham for a third occasion, this time taking on Conor Wallace on Saturday, October 3.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWhile Wallace\u2019s manager, Mick Francis, pushed for the fight to take place in Australia, it appears that the contest is heading to Whittaker\u2019s hometown of Birmingham.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cSources close to the deal indicate that the Utilita Arena will host the light heavyweight showdown on October 3.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Wallace was born in Northern Ireland but now lives in Australia and has competed there throughout his career. He is ranked as the IBF\u2019s #2 contender and his meeting with Whittaker (IBF #3) would determine the IBF\u2019s new #1 and subsequent mandatory challenger.<\/p>\n<p>Therefore, the victor would be in line for a shot at Dmitry Bivol\u2019s unified light-heavyweight world titles, or involved in a vacant title bout if the Russian was stripped of, or decided to vacate, his IBF marble.<\/p>\n<p>That being said, Bivol recently fulfilled his IBF mandatory by outpointing Michael Eifert and is <a href=\"https:\/\/boxingnewsonline.net\/news\/bivol-mandatory-ordered\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">instead expected to face WBO mandatory challenger Callum Smith upon his next outing<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"British light-heavyweight Ben Whittaker has garnered a big following throughout his professional career and now the West Bromwich&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":694831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[41],"tags":[2560,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-694830","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-boxing","tag-boxing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694830","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=694830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/694830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/694831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=694830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=694830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=694830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}