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Dillian Whyte has made a change to his team ahead of his Mar. 6 rematch with Alexander Povetkin, which will stream live on DAZN.
Harold “The Shadow” Knight, who once co-trained former undisputed heavyweight champion Lennox Lewis, has been added to Team Whyte.
Knight also fought professionally from 1983-88, going 19-1 (15 KO) overall and unsuccessfully challenging Rocky Lockridge for the IBF 130-pound title in his final fight, retiring young for medial reasons
Whyte told Sky Sports that he sees Knight as “a very important piece of the puzzle, from a technical point of view and from an experience point of view.”
Knight himself had this to say:
“It’s going to be tough, believe it when I tell you, Povetkin is a very tough, smart fighter and he wants to stay there. This is where it comes from how bad you want it, and the team members around you, to see how good we are to put those ingredients into Dillian to get him back to that No. 1 ranking (with the WBC).”
Knight has been part of situations like this before, having been part of Lewis’ team in successful rematch wins over Oliver McCall and Hasim Rahman.
Whyte (27-2, 18 KO) will still be the betting favorite here, despite Povetkin (36-2-1, 25 KO) knocking him out clean last August. There really is the general belief out there that Povetkin, who is now 41, landed half a miracle shot; he’d been down twice in the fourth round before uppercutting Whyte silly in the fifth, and the feeling is that without Whyte getting a little over-aggressive, that just doesn’t happen.
But then again, maybe that’s just the way it is. It’s not like Whyte’s never been dropped or shook before that, and he’s never exactly been some defensive wizard. And Dillian is talking about being aggressive again for the rematch. Povetkin has gone through a reportedly tough fight with COVID since the first bout, hospitalized with the virus, and he’s an old fighter, but he’s crafty, he’s resilient, and he can crack. He’s always dangerous.