Ben Whittaker is likely to be out of the ring for some time after picking up an injury.
The 25-year-old Midlander moved to 2-0 with one quick on Saturday night in Saudi Arabia.
Whittaker took on Petar Nosic over six rounds at the Jeddah Superdome, as part of the supporting cast to Anthony Joshua’s defeat at the hands of Oleksandr Usyk.
‘The Surgeon’, who outpointed his former amateur foe via a unanimous decision in the kingdom, had been hoping to be more active, with his management team 258 Management –– headed up by the aforementioned Joshua –– revealing during fight week that he would be back between the ropes within a month.
But that now looks unlikely after Whittaker got injured against the Croatian-based Bosnian, with a towel wrapped across his right shoulder.
In an interview with Sky Sports in the aftermath of his victory, which came as part of the non-pay-per-view portion of the Box Office broadcast, Whittaker said:
“From the debut, I picked up a little niggle.
“I’m a person who wants to stay active like everybody’s said, so when I got this date, I pushed the injury to the back of my mind and just [went through with the] fight.”
Whittaker wowed last month as he made his professional debut, turning over after picking up a silver medal at the Tokyo Games. He stopped Greg O’Neill inside two rounds at the Bournemouth International Centre and began driving the train that he firmly believes will one day stop at the world title station.
He added:
“I got the win and we move on.
My main thing is that I just like to perform, I don’t like to let my team down and I wanted to be in camp with [trainer] Sugar[Hill Steward], but I wasn’t able to do that.
All it’s about for me now is keeping my standards. I need to go back home, go back to the drawing board and come back even prettier.
But I’m a perfectionist and I’ve got to keep putting on spectacular performances. If I don’t do that, I’m going to show upset.
These types of fights are nothing to me, I want world title fights, but I need to go home and find out what the injury actually is.”