Excitement is building for the first mega-fight of the new decade with Deontay Wilder and Tyson Fury meeting in their hotly anticipated rematch in February, and a certain Dillian Whyte has not been short of an opinion on both fighters as he tries to get his career back on track.

In an interview with Sky Sports, Whyte talked about his days sparring Klitschko in the Austrain mountains.

The Ukrainian was one of the most dominant heavyweight champions in history and held the WBA, WBO and IBF titles towards the latter stages of his career. As part of his preparation for title defences, he would regularly get promising heavyweights to spar in his camps.

The likes of Anthony Joshua, Wilder and Whyte all joined in for punishing training camps with the then heavyweight king.

Whyte reflected on his rivalry with Joshua and how they almost came to blows during one of the camps.

"I wanted to punch Joshua up, at first, because he was talking a lot of smack.

“There was genuine annoyance there. Bashir [Ali] and a couple of guys stopped me getting at him and then it sort of got squashed. It was a bit edgy.”

Whyte then revealed how Wilder joined the camps in the early part of his career and gave a withering assessment on why he may have sidestepped a fight with the Ukrainian.

"I've seen him getting knocked out," said Whyte. "Wladimir knocked him out."

"He knew what happened. He had his hands up. He was roughing Wlad up, bringing the smoke, and he was going wild.

"Wlad backs up, changes his footwork, feinting, feinting, jabs to the body, throws that feint jab, left hook. Wilder had his hands up, he was gone.

It wasn't no knockdown, he was knocked cold. Properly twitching as well.

"That's why they probably didn't want him to fight Wlad, because Wlad was going to fight him as a pro and Wilder never fancied it the whole time."

It remains to be seen whether Klitschko will reveal what actually happened in the camp, but what is clear is that Whyte’s trash talking is unlikely to abate any time soon.

Rumours of a fight with Alexander Povetkin look credible as he looks to be reinstated as the WBC mandatory challenger and get the elusive world title fight that he has coveted for some time.