DEL DELIVERS ONCE AGAIN
If there’s one thing heavyweight boxing fans should have learnt over the past decade, it’s that writing off Derek Chisora is, more often than not, a foolish exercise.
As he has become so accustomed to doing so over the years, Chisora once again made the doubters eat their words on Saturday night with a remarkable unanimous points decision win over domestic rival Joe Joyce.
Neither man could claim to have gone into the bout in the form of their lives, but both undoubtedly possess the hunger to fight on in the game, and so it proved in the ring during an entertaining and, at times, frenetic encounter.
On the front foot from the off, the first round turned out to be relatively sloppy for both fighters.
Chisora was boxing dirty but all within the laws of the sport. Joyce, meanwhile, couldn’t find his range, although he was imposing his size advantage on Del by leaning on him in the clinch and pushing him back.
In round two, Chisora landed one of his trademark looping right hands which landed flush on the chin of Joyce, but ‘The Juggernaut’ lived up to his nickname and barely batted an eyelid.
In round three, Joyce seemed to have found his range and was managing to smother Chisora’s punches. Over the course of the next few rounds, however, Del was still managing to find a way of landing the more eye-catching punches and even though they weren’t having a visible effect on Joyce, they were still winning him the rounds.
From loading up on near enough every punch, Chisora’s gas tank was starting to empty, with Joyce looking the fresher, and he started to pick off his opponent as he sat on the ropes looking for that one big shot.
In the ninth, it arrived.
In a round dominated by Joyce, it was Chisora who finally landed the right hand that sent his opponent crashing to the canvas. It wasn’t a flash knockdown, and it wasn’t a concussive knockdown, but it was enough for Joyce to hit the deck.
To Joyce’s credit, he beat the count and fought back impressively, with some observers making a case for him winning the remainder of the round. Maybe they had a point.
In the final round, Chisora looked like a man who knew that he just needed to survive to win the fight. He barely exchanged in the first two minutes but, as he has so often done in the past, when the going got tough, he bit down on that gumshield and swung for the hills.
The judges scored it unanimously in the favour of Chisora, who had once again defied the underdog tag handed to him by many in the build-up to the fight.
Where does Chisora go from here? Who knows. He has reiterated his plans to retire once he has completed 50 fights, which leaves him with two, but he has certainly earned the right for another mega pay day and Uncle Turki is likely to be on the phone in the coming days.
On the undercard, there were stand out performances from the likes of Dennis McCann, who schooled Ionut Baluta in their highly anticipated rematch to become European champion, and Moses Itauma who stopped the durable Mariusz Wach in two rounds to put the heavyweight boxing world on notice.
At the age of only 19, and having achieved what nobody has ever been able to do to Wach previously, it’s abundantly clear Itauma is a scary talent.
A huge week of boxing lies ahead as Zak Chelli defends his British and Commonwealth 168lbs title on away soil in Barnsley against the undefeated Callum Simpson, while over in LA, Terence Crawford aims to dethrone Israil Madrimov to become the WBA world 154lbs champion on what is the card of the year.
You can purchase your tickets for the AJ vs Dubois at Wembley Stadium by clicking HERE
Check out our latest interviews and subscribe to get a notification when our interviews go live by clicking HERE