Derek Chisora intends to box again. However fat the cheque or significant the title, the calls for him to be saved from himself have been loud for a considerable time and, if ignored, will eventually leave many with regret. Not just Derek.
In the course of 25 years scribbling about fighters and the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune they’ve all encountered in the murkiness that stalks the sport, I’d would imagine Tyson Fury has probably accumulated the most words. It is alleged he has a fight upcoming. Beside him in the time I’ve spent musing on boxing probably stands Bernard Hopkins, Ricky Hatton, Wladimir Klitschko and Anthony Joshua.
An unscientific instinctive listing. I’ve neither time nor inclination to provide the data. They are five outstanding fighters, Bernard probably the pick of the bunch if I permitted a digression into a pound for pound debate between them. I’ll resist because none of the five are the subject. Derek Chisora, who probably ranks #6 on this list of principle studies of the last quarter of a century writing about boxing is today’s muse.
As news broke this week that big Derek is booked to box Murat Gassiev, a 19-stone boulder from Russia almost 10 years and 200 rounds his junior, I was reminded of the number of times I’d contemplated the morbidity of his never ending, if colourful, career.
Here are a handful of entrants in the genre I’ve given the working title; Derek, there’s nothing else to say baby.
October 21st 2022. – Chisora lands stupefying, unnecessary trilogy fight with Tyson Fury
Derek was then heading toward his 39th birthday and was 2-10 against top ten heavyweights at the time.
Chisora is now 33-12. He is older than Joe Louis when trounced by a rampant Rocky Marciano and the last vestiges of Muhammad Ali were reluctantly dismantled by his student, Larry Holmes. Which isn’t to put Chisora, gallant as he has been at different points of his career, in a bracket with any of those illustrious foursome but it serves to remind the forgetful that 39 remains, as it always has been, old.
November 30th 2022 – Fury v Chisora III and the old routine
As the fight grew closer, concern grew but remained unspoken by those reliant on the sucre of the people promoting the event.
Chisora has lost a step since his best performances, perhaps two. He now relies more on his durability and his willingness to absorb punishment than any 38-year-old should. The price of boxing, for rugged practitioners like Chisora who stay too long is often high but usually paid far from the spotlight they leave.
December 3rd 2022 – Chisora the absorber, pummelled for pay and our ghoulish perversion
Widely predicted by all, Derek took his customary shellacking, smiled his smile and wandered toward the embrace of his young family and hopefully retirement. Of course, retirement never came.
The third meeting between Tyson Fury and Derek Chisora for the Heavyweight title was a luminous example in this particular collection of boxing’s gloomiest encounters. All involved, from the last spectator to those carrying buckets of spit, are complicit in permitting and encouraging Saturday’s prolonged brutality.
As expected, Derek Chisora was pummelled for thirty or more minutes. The masquerade of competitiveness tossed aside from the second round. Reality replaced salesmanship. Facts displaced fantasy.
Predictable. Pitiless.
May 28th 2024 – Chisora. Doomed to a banquet of consequence
….the crumbling husk of Derek Chisora is booked to face Joe Joyce in a fight which promises little for the victor, the end of any lingering sense of relevance for the loser and unnecessary accumulation of damage for Chisora; a 40-year-old veteran with too many boxing miles travelled and enough millions stowed away to discourage all but the most wilful nihilist.
January 23 2026 – The ghastly and the ghoulish, Chisora and Wilder to meet in April
And now to 2026, when the 42 year old Chisora, was booked to face the most destructive one-shot hitter of his generation, Deontay Wilder.
The ghoul that lurks beneath this affection and the resulting popularity, is the damage Chisora continues to accumulate. A walk forward, brawling style and the stoutness of his chin place him firmly in harm’s way. He absorbs and perseveres, rumbling on regardless of the risk or the punches that bounce and slide of his face and temples.
That fight was his 50th and constructed on the premise that it was the last. A retirement party, a chance for the British public to pay homage to an unlikely hero. But as with almost all fighters, the end is never the end.
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