Promoter Bob Arum believes that 38-year-old Derek Chisora has improved from the fighter that Tyson Fury easily beat twice in 2011 & 2014. For Chisora to be viewed as improved, he’d need a better record than 1-3 in his last four contests.
Despite Chisora’s atrocious record, he’s been hand-picked by Fury to challenge him for his WBC title on December 3rd at the Tottenham Hotspurs Stadium in London, England.
Unfortunately for the fans, Chisora (33-12, 23 KOs) doesn’t appear to have improved since his loss to Fury (32-0-1, 23 KOs) in their first fight in 2011 and gave former WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko huge problems in their clash in 2012.
Looking at those two fights, Chisora was considerably faster, leaner, and with a far better engine than he’s shown in the last six or seven fights.
You can tell from how Chisora labored against Kubrat Pulev and in his two fights against Joseph Parker that he’s deteriorating badly, like an old car with 300,000 miles on the odometer.
Given the way Chisora has looked lately, many boxing fans have openly said that they’d like to see him retire before he gets seriously hurt.
“I’m glad Tyson took this fight because he’ll keep busy. Of course, you always worry when your fighter is in with a heavy punching opponent because it’s boxing and anything can happen,” said Bob Arum to Boxing Social on the December 3rd fight between Tyson Fury and Derek Chisora.
“Absolutely, but again, I’m extremely worried,” said Arum when asked if this was the right fight to keep Fury busy. “I’m not just saying that because you’re in with a big puncher, and I just point to Chisora’s fight with Usyk, which was touch & go, where Usyk won a very close decision.
“Then look what happened. Usyk goes in with Joshua and beats him easily two times. So, you know, I think Chisora is a very, very good opponent, and it’s a fight that really catches the imagination of a lot of boxing people.
“You’re entitled to criticize. These are fans, fans can criticize, but they should take a look at the entire situation and realize that certain fighters at a particular point in their careers weren’t that good.
“They became a lot better later on, and the Chisora that twice fought Tyson Fury before is not the Chisora that we have now,” said Arum.
