Povetkin-Whyte Rematch Moving Date And To Gibraltar

It’s never a dull moment with scheduling and re-scheduling for big time prize fights these days, and Matchroom Boxing’s Eddie Hearn added to it Saturday night in London. This, as he announced that the delayed Alexander Povetkin-Dillian Whyte Heavyweight rematch will move off it’s March 6th date and to an intriguing location.

As in, the Isle of Gibraltar.

You read that correct.

Hearn spoke to Sky Sports during the live broadcast of the Matchroom show Saturday night a Wembley Arena to make the moves official,

?RUMBLE ON THE ROCK?@EddieHearn has revealed that @DillianWhyte's rematch with Alexander Povetkin is heading to Gibraltar with a new date of March 27, live on Sky Sports Box Office pic.twitter.com/XgW71jH5Ai

— Sky Sports Boxing (@SkySportsBoxing) February 20, 2021

“Dillian Whyte training in Portugal. We know that’s now a ‘Red List Country’ (for Covid 19 quarantining). Funny enough, he (Whyte) didn’t fancy the hotel quarantine (10 days mandated by British Government). We were trying to get him into Spain. The borders are closed down. 

Unfortunately, we’ve had to move the event, just three weeks- March the 27th to…Gibraltar.

‘The Rumble on the Rock.’ This is wild. This is crazy. It’s gonna be epic.

It’s gonna be a momentous Heavyweight occasion. A little wild. A little wacky. In these times we’ve had to do something different.”

Our Marquis Johns had written about the travel issue from Portugal for Whyte that was jeopardizing his status for the fight. A fight that Whyte has been wanting for months after his humiliating loss last August.

This after the former WBA World champ, Russian Povetkin got off the canvas twice in August to cold-cock Whyte with a single left uppercut in the fifth round dropping the WBC top contender. Whyte laid motionless for several seconds and the referee did not bother to count, as Povetkin scored one of the biggest recent victories of his career.

And, that upset derailed any chance that Whyte, who hasn’t won a significant fight in over two and a half years, had to try to maneuver his way into a mandatory title shot with the WBC and it’s champ, Tyson Fury.

The two had scheduled a rematch for November, but Povetkin contracted Covid 19 and had to be hospitalized briefly in Russia. Matchroom and Whyte had pushed for the fight to happen in January, but the Russian had only begun to train recently again in early January.

The March 6th date was to have been at Wembley Arena will some fans socially distanced, but will now, move to Iberian Peninsula off of Spain, where 30,000 people inhabit the mountain area known as “The Rock.” While Gibraltar is considered a British Overseas Territory, this will apparently help circumvent the Covid 19 restrictions for England, currently.

Hearn confirmed that all of the undercard fights will transfer to March 27th, as well.