Chisora to face Pulev for EBU strap

By Boxing News - 02/01/2016 - Comments

chisora5By Scott Gilfoid: It looks like Anthony Joshua is out of luck for a fight against Dereck Chisora (25-5, 17 KOs) for his next fight. Chisora, 32, will be fighting former world title challenger Kubrat Pulev (22-1, 12 KOs) for the vacant EBU heavyweight title, according to the latest boxing news.

Instead of Joshua fighting Chisora, he could possibly be fighting in an IBF heavyweight eliminator bout against Carlos Takam (33-2-1, 25 KOs) in April. The winner of that fight would become the mandatory challenger to IBF champion Charles Martin.

I see the 6’4” Pulev being a bad match-up for Chisora. Pulev has an excellent jab and he’s able to fight really well on the outside. Chisora will be giving away too much height and reach against Pulev, and I see this fight going badly for Chisora. It’ll be just like Chisora’s two fights against the taller Tyson Fury. Chisora didn’t have the reach to land his shots against Fury, and he wound up losing badly.

It makes sense for Chisora’s new promoters at Sauerland Events to put him in with Pulev, because they promote him as well. As such, Sauerland would have their fingerprints all over the gears to a fight between them and they wouldn’t have to match Chisora against a non-Sauerland Events heavyweight. Chisora and Pulev are kind of long in the tooth to be wasting time fighting for the EBU strap.

I always saw that belt as being fought over by younger heavyweights on their way to becoming top contenders to fight for titles. It’s kind of disappointing to see guys as old as Chisora and Pulev fighting for the lesser titles instead of going after world honors. But I guess those guys have already tried their hand at fighting for world titles, and they’ve been found out.

Pulev, 34, was blasted out in five rounds by former IBF/IBO/WBA/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko in November 2014. Chisora was easily beaten by a one-armed former WBC champion Vitali Klitschko in 2012. Chisora was also beaten by Tyson Fury in a WBO heavyweight eliminator bout in November 2014.

“It won’t be Dereck next,” Joshua’s promoter Eddie Hearn said to skysports.com about Chisora not being the next opponent for Joshua. “We spoke with Chisora and his team who clearly didn’t want the fight so we moved on very quickly – we can’t afford to get slowed in getting things down and will announce AJ’s next opponent at the end of this week.”

I honestly don’t know why Hearn was even interested in matching Joshua against Chisora in the first place. It’s not as if Chisora has redeemed himself in any way since his loss to Fury in 2014. Chisora has won his last five fights since then, but he’s beaten gawd awful opposition in Andras Csomor, Jakov Gospic, Peter Erdos, Marcelo Luiz Nascimento and Beka Lobjanidze.

Those are the type of guys that a young heavyweight would fight when they’re just starting out their careers. Chisora is an aging nine-year pro, and it’s baffling why he’s been downshifting gears to fight the elementary fighters. I mean, when you’ve been a pro for as long as Chisora, you really should be at least fighting contenders, don’t you think?

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I realize that Chisora was whipped by Fury in losing by a 10th round knockout a couple of years ago, but it’s a waste of time and a big waste of Chisora’s career for him to have burned through all of 2015 and the first month of 2016 fighting fodder opposition. Chisora should have taken one tune-up/confidence booster after the loss to Fury, and then started fighting contenders again instead of getting stuck on fighting 3rd tier opposition.

“I don’t think anyone was ducking anyone. It’s professional boxing and it was down to money. Dereck wasn’t happy with the terms presented to him and said he wasn’t going to do it,” said Chisora’s promoter Kalle Sauerland to skysports.com about the Joshua vs. Chisora negotiations.

I figured that the Joshua-Chisora fight wouldn’t get made due to money issues. Chisora has been in too many big fights for him to take smaller money, and I had a feeling that he wouldn’t be offered enough money by Hearn for the risk involved for the Joshua fight. It would have likely been a pay-per-view fight on Sky Box Office, and it would have been crazy for Chisora to take a smaller cut of the pie. I think a 50-50 deal would have been fair for the Joshua-Chisora fight, because Joshua needs Chisora’s scalp to add to his resume for him to become a more popular fighter.

Pulev has won his last two fights against Maurice Harris and George Arias since his stoppage loss to Klitschko.



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