Top rated heavyweight contender Dillian Whyte is convinced that the World Boxing Council is protecting their heavyweight champion, Deontay Wilder.

Whyte is preparing to return on July 20 against Oscar Rivas at the O2 in London.

Whyte, ranked at number 1 by the WBC, has been unable to secure a title shot through the sanctioning body.

Whyte was recently passed over for a mandatory shot, in favor of Dominic Breazeale - who faces Wilder on May 18th at Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

“I think the WBC is protecting Deontay Wilder,” Whyte said to Express Sport.

“Maybe because he's the first reigning American champion in a long time or whatever. They definitely seem to protect him because the Breazeale vs [Eric] Molina fight isn't even eligible because Molina was banned from all sport formally. They don't even run a clean boxing programme so I don't even understand how they could make someone like that compete. It's crazy.”

Whyte met with WBC President Mauricio Sulaiman several weeks ago to resolve the situation, but since then has not heard anything in terms of getting a mandatory shot.

He hopes to become the mandatory challenger to the Wilder-Breazeale winner.

“I’ve won so many fights for the WBC, I’ve turned down the Anthony Joshua fight, one of the reasons I turned that down was because of the Breazeale fight and possibly Wilder,” Whyte said.

“All of a sudden Breazeale is fighting Wilder. I’d back myself to beat any of them, Wilder, Fury and Joshua. The good thing is I’m not tied down to anyone. I work with Sky mostly but I can still work with ESPN, DAZN, BT Sports and Showtime. I haven’t spoke to the WBC in about three of four weeks, we’ve been emailing and texting and calling with no responses. They were supposed to make a decision two or three weeks ago and nothing, all we hear is nothing."