Olympic silver medalist Joe Joyce will face the old veteran Derek Chisora in a curious heavyweight match-up on July 27th at the O2 Arena in London, England.
You can argue the rationale for this fight is to slowly build Joyce’s confidence back up after his two defeats against Zhilei Zhang. Still, it’s going a little overboard regarding the Juggernaut being given tomato cans to boost his mental game back to where it once was.
A Predictable Outcome
Unless Joyce takes it easy on Chisora, this fight will end with a knockout by the mid-rounds. Chisora is not world level and never has been, and is more just a trial horse now, an easy mark for Joyce or anyone in the division.
It’s a business-level fight for Joyce, the old-timer Chisora, as the British fans will likely turn out in high numbers to watch these two live at the O2 Arena. I wouldn’t be surprised if it’s a total sellout, with the venue filled to the brim with 20,000 screaming fans, eager to see Joyce and Chisora mixing it up.
The power-punching Joyce (16-2, 15 KOs) has been operating at a higher level than the 40-year-old Chisora (34-13, 23 KOs), and this fight has a mismatch written all over it.
Four fights ago in 2022, Joyce looked like 24K gold in his eleventh-round knockout win over Joseph Parker, and the only hiccups he’s had were his two fights against the killer puncher Zhilei Zhang. Anyone could lose against the version of Zhang that Joyce fought.
Boxing fans on social media believe that Joyce should be fighting better opposition than Chisora, and he doesn’t need to be babied with repeated confidence boosters after his loss to Zhang.
Chisora’s Losing Streak: A Sign of the Times
Chisora’s record in his last six fights is 2-4 and 1-5 because one of those victories was a controversial decision against Kubrat Pulev, which he clearly deserved a defeat. That was definitely a defeat for Chisora, but he was fighting on home turf in London, so it’s not surprising that he was gifted a win.
Chisora has been losing every time out since 2020, and many boxing fans want to see him retire already because he’s looking worse every time.
Former WBC heavyweight champion Tyson Fury received considerable criticism from fans for giving Chisora a title shot in 2022, although he’d lost three out of his last four fights going into that match.
With all the deserving contenders waiting for a world title shot, it was a bad look on Fury’s part to throw a bone to his old friend Chisora, who is quite wealthy with a fortune estimated at £12million, which is pretty good for a fighter that has never won a world title or beaten anyone of note during his 17-year career.