Dillian Whyte's long road to getting Alexander Povetkin back in the ring for a rematch looks set to finally reach its end destination on March 6.
Whyte looked set to leap to the top of the growing list of world heavyweight championship contenders as he bossed the former WBA champion over four rounds at Matchroom Fight Camp in August.
However, a superb uppercut from out of nowhere dropped "The Body Snatcher" in Round 5 and gave the Russian veteran a surprising victory.
In order to regain the WBC interim title and the chance to challenge what could be an undisputed heavyweight champ after Anthony Joshua and Tyson Fury meet later this year, Whyte absolutely must avenge the one-punch defeat.
It was scheduled to take place as early as November as part of Matchroom's fall schedule, but Povetkin contracted COVID-19 and struggled to shake off the dangerous virus.
Now, it appears he is finally back to full fitness, and the two will headline the March card on Sky Sports Box Office in the U.K. and Ireland, as well as everywhere else across the globe on DAZN.
"I was ready to go, I didn’t take any punishment in the first fight," Whyte told DAZN's Chris Mannix this week about that August loss, only the second of his pro career.
"People say ‘but you were stopped’, but being stopped and taking sustained punishment are two different things. I was landing all the damaging shots, then I got hit with a good clean shot. I got up and was like ‘yeah, cool, let’s run it back’.
"What I did was working fine. There are so many things you can change and adapt, but you don’t know how things are going to go. He might come out a hundred times better this time. He might come out a hundred times worse.
"I don’t worry about what he’s doing. I’ll make the adjustments and changes that I need to make."
The Londoner admitted to Mannix that he cannot think about the world title scene, which contains competition from not just his only other conquerer Joshua and the unbeaten Fury but also Oleksandr Usyk and Joe Joyce, until he has settled the score with Povetkin.
"I wanna fight for the championship," he explained. "That’s why I’m in the game. But I don’t care about whatever’s happening over there. I only care about beating Alexander Povetkin because if I do that, then I can think about the title.
"People think I overlooked Povetkin. I didn’t. This is heavyweight boxing. Anyone can get caught. Joshua fought Ruiz at three weeks notice and got stopped. Ruiz had three weeks to prepare and he won the belts. That’s heavyweight boxing, man.
"If I beat Povetkin, am I gonna fight a warm-up fight? No! I want the big fights.
One name Mannix suggested, should Whyte beat Povetkin but be made to wait for a title shot, is former WBC champion Deontay Wilder.
Wilder was dethroned by Fury almost a year ago and hasn't fought since. In fact, there hasn't been much movement on his next fight at all, as some show concern over his state of mind since taking that first loss.
"Wilder would be a big fight but he needs to come back from his own defeat," said Whyte to Mannix.
"Coming back from that first defeat after being so dominant for so long is hard. We are boxers but we are all people who go through things like depression.
"Who knows if he will come back (at all), or if he will be the same? I lost and straight away, on the way back to the changing room I was saying ‘let’s get the rematch done’.
You can watch the interview in full with a DAZN subscription.