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Whyte Here, Whyte Now: Why Itauma bout represents last-chance saloon for aging star
Dillian Whyte stands with his arm raised to the sky, another victory secured. It is less than ten days until Christmas, and the star has secured an early present on the road.
A seven-round victory over Ebenezer Tetteh, waved off by the latter's retirement after he was comprehensively outclassed, means that he moves to 31-3 inside the ring.
But outside it, the questions are already swirling. It is a third straight win for Whyte, but also only his third bout in the past two-and-a-half years, nine months after his last.
The settings of his latest triumph are far from auspicious, in front of a few thousand fans at the bottom of Europa Point in Gibraltar, some few thousand miles away from home.
It seems almost faintly ridiculous that a man who fought for the WBC heavyweight title only three years ago against Tyson Fury at Wembley Stadium should find himself here.
Yet this is the path Whyte has walked since that day, a man plagued by a succession of problems that, despite results in the ring, has curtailed attempts to return to the top.
This August, live on DAZN Pay-Per-View, the star will step back into the ring for the first time since he defeated Tetteh, against WBO number one Moses Itauma in Riyadh.
It is a true sea-change bout, between an aging star who appears on the way out of a heavyweight division in flux, and a rising talent seemingly destined for a world title shot.
As the boxing world spins around him, Whyte knows that this will be the last-chance saloon for his prospects as a legitimate contender, a final opportunity to restore his lustre.
Win against Itauma, and he will have toppled a young man that looks to be on course for the summit of the sport. Lose, and it will be the end of the line for his top-tier status.
To trace back Whyte's troubles, we must return to that fateful night at Wembley Stadium in April 2022. Whyte was coming into the biggest fight of his career so far against Fury.
He was WBC interim champion, in his second reign after reclaiming the title from Alexander Povetkin over a year prior. He was coming in after a dozen months out of the ring.
Plans to face Otto Wallin in a defence the previous autumn had fallen through when he had been forced to withdraw with injury, and 'The Body Snatcher' wanted his full shot.
Fury was angling to face Oleksandr Usyk himself, but the Ukrainian was tied up for a rematch with Anthony Joshua, leaving 'The Gypsy King' to ultimately accept the challenge.
Whyte was absent from plenty of the media build-up, with his opponent suggesting he could sell out fights "against his own shadow" and promising to retire after his victory.
Ultimately, that didn't help the former's case. When he stepped into the ring for a postwar record crowd, it didn't take long to see that he would be outmatched by the star name.
It made for a tough night. Only Joshua had ever truly outgunned him in the ring before; even his first loss to Povetkin came when he was up on the cards, flattened in the fifth.
When Fury eventually finished it in the sixth, it felt as if the curtain was slowly dropping on Whyte's tenure at the top. His losses were far from disgraces - but they still added up.
Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing
Then, it started to go pear-shaped. He scored a majority decision win in November over Jermaine Franklin at Wembley Arena, but landed a lower punch percentage than his foe.
The following summer, a major domestic rematch with Joshua looked primed to catapult him back into the top of the conversation, only for a positive drugs test to sink his hopes.
His opponent moved on to Robert Helenius, and Whyte spent 2023 without a foe, slowly rusting outside of the ring as he plotted his way back into it for another major shot.
Christian Hammer, in March last year, proved to be a bust - the Romanian-German retired on his stool after just three rounds at a County Mayo theatre to leave him furious.
Then he had to wait another nine months to get another run, with his comprehensive success over Tetteh failing to hide a performance that failed to set his supporters alight.
An all-British bout with Joe Joyce in Manchester should have built momentum, but again, injury issues reared their head to scotch the bout, with Filip Hrgovic taking Whyte's place.
Leigh Dawney/Queensberry
And now he comes to Itauma, arguably the toughest talent he has faced since Fury in terms of boxing IQ, barely out of his teens but regarded by some as a heavyweight prodigy.
The stakes are clear, but not just for him. His opponent has the world at his feet, a top-notch ranking and the prospect - with no disrespect - of bigger fish to fry in the near-future.
Itauma arguably is yet to be tested by a fighter of Whyte's own calibre too, no matter how far down the pecking order he appears to have slipped. It marks a new level for him.
Yet a loss would not be fatal to his own future prospects. A first defeat would be a learning curve for a fighter whose ceiling remains far away, with plenty of room for growth.
For Whyte though, this truly could be the last stop. If he can upset expectations and get back on top, there's still life in his prospects. Lose though, and it might be goodnight.
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