By Nate Anderson: Unbeaten heavyweight prospect Derek Chisora (9-0, 5 KOs) grinded out an unimpressive eight-round decision on Friday night against journeyman Daniel Peret (15-20, 6 KOs) at the York Hall, Bethnal Green, in London. Chisora, 25, originally from Zimbabwe, struggled against the 35 year-old Peret, mostly limited to landing jabs all night long. Both fighters were significantly overweight, which effected their stamina in the later rounds. The final score was 80-72 on a referee’s decision.
Chisora, thought to be a good prospect by some in boxing, had problems landing his right hand through much of the night due to a combination of poor form and bad hand speed. In a way, Chisora reminded me of a poor version of American heavyweight Kevin Johnson, only without nearly as good a jab.
Chisora, 6’1”, and a hefty 258, won the 1st round with the use of his jab. Indeed, that’s pretty much all the attempted to throw all round long with the exception of one wild looping right hand that missed by a mile. It seemed that Chisora had no confidence in throwing his right hand for one reason or another. Peret, 6’0” 253, who comes from Russian and now lives in Norway, was content to absorb the jabs and occasionally throw a right hand of his own.
Chisora continued to mostly throw jabs in the 2nd round, throwing them one after and another without adding other punches. Against a journeyman like Peret, this would seem to be the perfect opponent for Chisora to mix in other types of punches. However, he seemed totally dependent on his jab. When he would throw a right hand, he had a bad habbit of throwing it from below his chest level which seemed to take power off the shot at the same time making it easier to block.
Whether that was laziness or just a bad habit, the effect was that Chisora had little success with the punch throughout the night and might as well have not bothered throwing it at all. Even Peret, who has no power of his own, had better form when throwing his right hand than Chisora. In the first minute of the round, Peret landed several good shots, mixing up lefts and rights to the head of Chisora.
In the 3rd and 4th round, Chisora jabbed away at Peret, trying hard to look good and win the rounds. Peret, however, wasn’t allowing him to look good, because he often taunted Chisora and egged him on as if daring him to land a right hand. Unfortunately, Chisora was only capable of offering up a handful of weak right hands in both rounds and looked mediocre.
In the 5th and 6th rounds, Chisora missed often with his right hands and began to labor, sweating profusely. He was still able to control the rounds with his jab, but he was getting much less on the punches than in the previous rounds. Chisora attempted to get some life in his punches in the early part of the 6th round, at one point rushing forward after Peret like he was going to land some big punches. Instead, Chisora was only able to land a few weak right hands which Peret easily took. Peret then taunted Chisora by imitating his running attack and making light of it.
Chisora fought his best round in the 7th, showing some good form on his right hands and landing a lot of jabs. His rights still lacked any kind of power, but at least he was throwing it correctly in this round. The effort to throw the punches correctly seemed to take a lot of energy out of Chisora, however. He looked exhausted by the end of the round despite only landing a small amount of rights in the round.
In the 8th, Chisora went back to throwing exclusively jabs, not even trying to score a knockout. Strange as it was, Peret was the one that began opening up with right hands in the round, landing several good ones and getting the crowd cheering for him.