Ben Whittaker and Liam Cameron will look to settle their rivalry in a rematch on 20 April, six months after they fell out of the ring to end their first fight.
After Whittaker and Cameron tumbled over the top rope, with the former suffering an injury, the bout was declared a technical draw. Not only was the incident strange, but the result was controversial.
Many fans believed Cameron had outboxed the unbeaten Whittaker (8-0-1) across the six completed rounds, and in the aftermath of the fight, Cameron accused the prospect of pulling them over the top rope and faking his injury.
Cameron, 34, entered that bout with a 23-6 record, as a huge underdog against the Olympic silver medalist, 27. The Sheffield boxer will also be an underdog in their rematch, as he fights Whittaker in the latter’s hometown of Birmingham.
“I’m going to finish the job,” Cameron declared on Thursday (13 February), at a launch press conference for their second clash. “I got up, didn’t I? I got up, ready to fight.
“We’ll put it all to bed. I’ll do my best, and that will be enough. You saw me turning the screw. Hopefully I can just flatten him in the first round.”
Whittaker countered: “I like to just prove points to myself, and how good of a boxer I am – and that will show. I had a lot of options, there were a lot of people I could have picked, but it was the right option for me.
“There’s no ‘win, lose or draw’; it’s just ‘win’. Win and move on. 20 April, it’s judgement day.”
Whittaker also addressed his break from social media, which followed October’s fight in Saudi Arabia.
“Again, there was options,” he told The Ring. “[I was asked], ’Do you wanna do this podcast? Do you wanna talk about this?’ But I was like: ‘For what?’ You know, there’s no point me trying to… not make excuses, but sway people’s minds.
“At the end of the day, people will have their opinions. They’ll think it did happen for a reason, or I pulled him over, or he pushed me over. Me coming out [to discuss it] would have ruffled some feathers. I don’t really care about no one’s opinion, other than the close people around me.
“Me trying to just make other people feel better about the situation, there was no need to. I know what truly happened, he knows what truly happened.”
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