Joseph Parker must win his rematch with Dereck Chisora on Saturday night to stay in a position to be made the WBO mandatory for champion Oleksandr Usyk. Parker vs. Chisora 2 will be shown LIVE on DAZN.
Unfortunately, there’s not a whole lot of interest from boxing fans in seeing Chisora and Parker run it back. Despite the controversy over their previous fight, fans would prefer not to see these two go at it again.
Indeed, there is ZERO buzz about the Parker-Chisora II fight this week on social media, as the fans just aren’t interested in seeing these two shopworn fighters go at it again.
Fans would prefer to see Chisora, someone like Efe Ajagba and Parker, face Frank Sanchez. I mean, there needs to be some progression between these guys rather than giving the fans a fight that they don’t want to see.
“I think Parker is right there. He’s on the verge of becoming a mandatory challenger, but Del Boy, if he beats you [that’s it],” said Eddie Hearn to Secondsout on Saturday’s rematch.
“You can never really talk about Del that he can’t challenge for world titles because, of course, he can,” Hearn continued.
“Del just loves to fight, and five years ago, he gave us one of the best fights ever [against Dillian Whyte] at that arena.
“He says he’s going to give us another one next week, and I believe him, so let’s see,” said Hearn in being extremely lowkey in hyping the Parker vs. Chisora rematch.
The former WBO heavyweight champion Parker (29-2, 21 KOs) and #12 WBC fringe contender Chisora (32-11, 23 KOs) will be meeting for a rematch this Saturday on December 18th at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England.
Last May, the 29-year-old Parker edged Chisora by a controversial 12 round split decision at the same arena in Manchester, and many boxing fans felt that the judges robbed ‘War’ Chisora.
This writer saw it as a case of Chisora looking so incredibly fatigued in many of the rounds, which made it difficult for the judges to give him credit for the brief work that he was doing.
Although Chisora started strong in dropping Parker in the first round, he quickly gassed out and looked terribly tired and badly in need of oxygen through the remainder of the fight.
It’s unclear whether Chisora did ANY cardio work going into the fight because he looked untrained in his stamina.
You can argue the only reason Parker didn’t completely obliterate Chisora is that he looked timid and shaken from his early knockdown in the first. A good heavyweight in their prime would have likely massacred the tired-looking Chisora, but Parker didn’t possess the killer instinct needed
Parker is ranked #3 WBO, #4 IBF, #5 WBC and is in an excellent position to be made mandatory. It’s been three years since Anthony Joshua dethroned Parker in an odd fight in Cardiff, Wales. The referee Giuseppe Quartarone seemed to be running interference for Joshua, keeping Parker off of him in one of the weirdest fights you’ll ever see.
Unfortunately for Parker, he lost his title without getting many opportunities to get in punching range of Joshua due to the referee continually pulling him away. A fight like that should have had a rematch because it was too strange.
In Parker’s next match, he was roughed up for 12 rounds by Dillian Whyte and beaten by a close 12 round decision. It was a winnable fight for Parker if he’d gotten in the mud with Whyte and started fouling back, but he played Mr. nice guy and was beaten up.
Since Parker’s loss to Whyte, he’s won his last five fights against sublevel opposition for the most part. The only somewhat decent name on the list was Chisora, if you rate him. Chisora is a fringe-level guy, who is fun to watch, but he’s not good enough to beat top 10 heavyweights, especially now.
Despite being a fringe-level fighter, Chisora has done well financially. His net worth is reportedly $5 million, which is a lot of money for a fighter that has never won a world title and has lost 11 times.
You can argue that if Chisora were an American heavyweight, he wouldn’t be nearly as prosperous, and he wouldn’t have been given all the opportunities to headline.