Derek Chisora
By Kamangeni Phiri
NO retreat no surrender.
That seems to have been the driving motto for Zimbabwean born British heavyweight boxer, Derek War Chisora, as he was beaten to a pulp by his fellow Briton and friend, Tyson Fury, in a one-sided WBC contest on Saturday night.
Despite the pummeling that started as early as the third round, Chisora kept coming back for more punishment until he was literally saved by the bell in the 10th round.
British freelance journalist, Daniel Harris writing for the Guardian summed it well:
“It’s round 10. Chisora comes out for another three minutes of suffering because that’s what he does, but Victor Loughlin, the ref, is looking at him closely. One more serious dig might do it, but instead he swings to the body and lands a couple, as Fury sticks him with a far more serious right to the coupon; a coupon that looks increasingly unlike how it looked half an hour ago … and the ref says enough!
Tyson Fury is very good, Derek Chisora is very tough, and that will forever be the case”.
There was to be no fairytale result for Chisora on the Saturday night of December 3 at Tottenham Hotspur Stadium where 60,000 freezing fans watched the 38-year old Zimbabwean born boxer being humiliated.
The somehow-sold-out fight saw Chisora taking home a relatively smaller total purse of £5.77 million ($7million) compared to Fury’s total of £29million ($36.5million).
Chisora’s purse may appear small in comparison, but any average person would be delighted to receive the battering that the Anglo-Zimbabwean pugilist received for such a pay-cheque.
The Saturday night fight at the 62,850-seater completed a trilogy of fights between the two heavy-weight boxers and Chisora lost on all occasions.
The pair had promised the “greatest first round in the heavyweight game”, but the reality didn’t live up to the billing in a largely disappointing bout, where the occasion was better than the contest.
That’s a 13th loss for Chisora and you wonder where he goes from here, but for Fury the long-awaited Oleksandr Usyk fight, with all the heavyweight gold on the line, is a possible for either February or March.
If that falls through, as Fury said in a truly chaotic after-fight ring scene, it could be another all-British fight with Joe Joyce in the opposite corner
In Boxing history, there are very few contenders who secured a world boxing title shot at the age of 38 burdened with a record of 12 defeats, including three losses on the trot in their last four fights.
Yet Dereck “War” Chisora did just that on Saturday night. A lot had changed since the two British heavyweight fighters last traded leather in 2014. Britain is no longer part of the European Union and the only monarch the two boxers knew, Queen Elizabeth the Second died in September, 2022.
Chisora, who at 38 is certainly no longer a boy, dropped his moniker ‘Del Boy’ in 2018 for a more imposing mature one, ‘War’. He has changed managers twice as he tried to redefine a flagging career.
The name ‘War’ was meant to mark the boxer’s renaissance in 2018 under the management of retired British boxer, David Haye, a former world champion whom he believed had the capacity to take him to the top of the sport.
But it never exactly turned out like that. The former enemies-and opponents’ partnership lasted for three years as it ended in 2021 after six fights with an evenly balanced record.
Chisora won three fights under Haye’s management, including a big stoppage of David Price but was knocked out by Dillian Whyte and slipped to points defeats to Oleksandr Usyk and Joseph Parker.
Both the boxer and his former manager Haye agreed that Chisora greatly improved as a pugilist when he assumed the moniker War as he was now giving fighting fans, “the big nights of heavyweight clashes they have called out for.”
Not many dreamt that Chisora, with a ranking outside the top ten in all four major governing bodies, would get a shot at a world title at this stage of his career.
Pundits had already dismissed the Fury/Chisora fight as a non-event well before the day of the bout, arguing Fury was using the Chisora fight to keep himself in good shape ahead of a possible unification fight of all heavyweight boxing belts in 2023 with Ukrainian boxer, Ukrainian Oleksandr Usyk.
Usyk holds the WBA, IBF and WBO heavyweight belts while Fury is the WBC champion.
The plan from Fury’s camp was to first fight Antony Joshua (AJ) and they had already booked Cardiff stadium for December 3 – in the hope of luring AJ into what was dubbed “the biggest fight in British boxing history” and then Usyk.
Joshua refused the fight and Usyk ruled himself out with an injury, leaving Fury who last fought in April2022 short of options.
This is how the Finchley slugger, Chisora, suddenly found himself as a frontrunner for a shot at the green and gold belt.
But make no mistake; the Zimbabwean-born British boxer is no pushover. He has fought world champions like then WBC title holder, Vitali Klitschko in 2012 and Usyk, another Ukraine fighter and lasted the distance, matching both champions pound for pound. Chisora lost both matches by judges’ unanimous decisions.
Derek Chisora is a professional British boxer born on December 29, 1983 in Mbare, one of the oldest suburbs in Zimbabwe’s capital city, Harare. He is the son of Viola and Paul Chisora. His parents divorced when he was just four years old. Chisora then went to Hatfield where he spent his early years in the care of his maternal grandmother and step-grandfather. As a teenager he attended Churchill School, where he became a paramedic for the school’s sports team. At the age of 16, Chisora and his family moved to the United Kingdom in 1999. They settled in Finchley, London.
He has challenged for the WBC heavyweight title once in 2012 and the December, 3 fight will be his second shot at the belt. Chisora has held multiple heavyweight championships at regional level, including the British and Commonwealth titles from 2010 to 2011, and the European title from 2013 to 2014. As an amateur, he won the ABA super-heavyweight title in 2006.
Chisora is ranked as the world’s eighth-best active heavyweight by BoxRec. Chisora’s knockout-to-win percentage stands at 70 percent.
The Mbare-bred boy was a late starter in the sport as he launched his boxing career at the age of 19. His club, Finchley ABC in Barnet, North London, also groomed heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua.
Chisora turned professional under Frank Warren‘s Queensberry Promotions banner. Parallels can be drawn between Derek and another legendary pugilist who also hailed from Mbare, the late Proud ‘Kilimanjaro’ Chinembiri. Like Kilimanjaro, Chisora is heavily built and agile, two strengths that the boxers applied effectively in punishing opponents. Chisora made his professional debut on 17 February 2007 at the Wembley Arena in London where he beat Hungarian István Kecskés by a technical knockout (TKO) in the second round in typical Kilimanjaro style.
Chisora’s accent carries more echoes of Finchley than Harare although he told the Guardian that he still speaks fluent Shona. When he arrived in Finchley from Harare, Chisora hanged out with some local bad boys and ended up engaging in petty crimes, including street fighting.
This, ironically, was to be the genesis of an illustrious boxing career which was to give him fame and millions of British pounds.
“There was evidence but not enough to put me in prison. So we asked for probation. I think they saw I wasn’t ruthless. I obeyed the rules for two years and my probation officer, Peter Yates, said: ‘Why don’t you try boxing?’ He fixed me up at Finchley Boxing Club,” Chisora said in an interview he did with the Guardian way back in 2010.
Like most celebrities, the man prefers to keep his family life private but is quick to declare his undying love for his two beautiful daughters.
The identity of the girls’ mother, like that of Chisora’s future career plans, remains unknown.
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