Eddie Hearn says Ben Whittaker needs interim fight before title shot

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Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn spoke to iFL TV immediately following Ben Whittaker’s win over Conor Wallace and says he’s clear to him that Whittaker needs to take an interim fight to display better form before stepping in for a mandatory world title fight. “Ben’s got to prove himself against someone like Conor Wallace if we’re going to be talking about him against the likes of Callum Smith and Dmitry Bivol, because he’s got the ability to be beating those guys, but with all due respect to Conor Wallace, if you’re going to beat those guys you need to beat Conor Wallace well,” Hearn said. “And he won on a unanimous decision, let’s get that right, but the end was a little bit hairy, shall we say. “If he would’ve went in there tonight and iced Conor Wallace in five or six rounds and looked absolutely sensational — you’ve heard from Andy Lee already, ‘we’re ready for Bivol’. Now, when I got into the ring, Andy Lee told me they’ve had COVID the last week. But, ultimately, tough sh-t. [If] you go into a fight, you go into a fight, don’t matter whether you got COVID or one leg. You chose to go in and that’s how it is. “You could tell that I don’t think his fitness was up to speed…Now, after that performance, we need another fight [before Bivol]. We are mandatory for the winner of Callum Smith against Dmitry Bivol, but we need another fight. I know that we need another fight, because we’ve got to be better than that.”