Promoter Eddie Hearn says light heavyweight Ben Whittaker can be the next big star in British boxing. He believes he’s got “can’t miss” type talent, and he wants to turn him into a world champion at 175.
(Credit: Mark Robinson/Matchroom Boxing)
The Matchroom boss Hearn is banking on Whittaker (9-0-1, 6 KOs) becoming the next big star in the UK. He’s got him signed to a long-term deal, and he’s going to try and push him fast, starting with his debut with Matchroom against Ben Gavazi (19-1, 13 KOs) on November 29 at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham, England.
“Can’t-Miss” Talent at 175
Whittaker vs. Gavazi will have the vacant WBC Silver 175-lb title on the line for the fight. The event will be shown live on DAZN.
“People keep saying to me, ‘Tell me the next big star of British boxing.’ This is the guy, and we’ve always known that,” said promoter Eddie Hearn to iFL TV about light heavyweight Ben Whittaker. “From what we can do globally, we can’t miss.”
Whittaker can be a “star” in a sense. He can be a star in the UK, like Conor Benn, and will do well if Hearn strategically matches him. If he is calculated with how he matched Whittaker, choosing only fights that are sure-thing wins for him, he can become a star. It would be a mistake to match Whittaker against any of these fighters:
Dmitry Bivol
David Benavidez
Callum Smith
Joshua Buatsi
Fast-Tracked to Stardom
“People don’t understand how good he is. He was a silver medalist in the [2020] Olympics. This is an elite fighter,” said Hearn about Whittaker. “We have to win world titles, but we have to build ourselves to that level. The cream will rise to the top. The whole country will be tuned in for this man. This [Gavazi] is going to be a good fight.”
Learning From Olympic Defeat
Fans saw Whittaker get walked down and beaten by Cuba’s Arlen Lopez in the 2020 Olympics. He also had a lot of trouble in his match against Russia’s Imam Khataev. Those two fights revealed the blueprint on how to defeat Whittaker by putting him under intense pressure and hitting him hard. He appears to stress out when tagged hard to the head and body.
Bradley Issues a Warning
Tim Bradley believes this fight is going to be “a lot tougher than what people think it’s going to be” for Whittaker. He says if he started “clowning around,” Gavazi is the type of fighter who can take advantage of that. Whittaker can’t afford to fight him the way he’s done in his nine lower-level fights he’s had in the pro ranks.
Whittaker’s former promoters at Boxxer didn’t do him any favors by matching him against so many tomato cans, which they didn’t need to do given his Olympic experience. Instead of taking fights seriously, Whittaker did a lot of showboating for the crowds, forming bad habits that didn’t help his development.
That may have been one of the reasons why he fell apart mentally when pressured by Liam Cameron in their first fight on October 12, 2024. Liam ignored the junk clowning that Whittaker was doing and kept walking him down, landing hard shots whenever he got to him. That little episode where Whittaker fell out of the ring in the sixth was a pretty example of a fighter quitting when the going got too tough.
Will Hearn Regret the Gamble?
Hearn could live to regret signing Whittaker to a long-term deal rather than a short, experimental two-fight deal. If he had done that, he could have thrown Whittaker to the wolves right away in back-to-back fights to test whether he could handle it. If he won and looked sensational, then it would have made sense to offer him a long-term deal. A good two-fight test would have been against these fighters:
David Morrell
Artur Beterbiev
Michael Collins has been writing about boxing since 2016, covering championship fights, rising prospects, and the business side of the sport.
