Dereck Chisora vs. Kubrat Pulev this Saturday in Germany

By Boxing News - 05/02/2016 - Comments

pulev42By Scott Gilfoid: Former heavyweight world title challenger Derek Chisora (25-5, 17 KOs) will be battling the taller 6’4 ½” Kubrat “The Cobra” Pulev (22-1, 12 KOs) this Saturday night on May 7 for the vacant EBU heavyweight title at the Barclaycard Arena, in Hamburg, Germany. These guys are kind of long in the tooth to be fighting for the EBU title. I don’t know they agreed to fight for a title like that at their age. If I were an old pro like them, I would tell the EBU, ‘No thanks. You can keep your EBU strap. I’m fighting for ranking at the world stage and to get a payday fight against Anthony Joshua.’ That pretty should be the goal for old timers like Chisora and Pulev.

The fight has big time ramifications for #8 IBF Chisora because it will give Matchroom Sport promoter Eddie Hearn an excuse to match his fighter IBF heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (16-0, 16 KOs) against him on Sky Box Office PPV.

Without a good excuse to make that fight, Hearn would be matching Joshua against Chisora off the back of five wins over 3rd tier fodder opponents that Chisora has complied in the last year since his one-sided 10th round stoppage loss to Tyson Fury in 2014.

Chisora has taken it easy since the loss to Fury. There has been zero risky fights for Chisora since then, and he’s going to be really up against it this Saturday night against Pulev simply because he’s such a big step up from the guys that Chisora has been facing since his loss to Fury.

Chisora has never beaten anyone remotely in the same class as Pulev, and it’s hard to imagine him starting now. Pulev is the type of guy that Chisora has always lost to. He doesn’t beat these type of fighters. Chisora beats the C and D level guys that have little in the way of skills that he can just run over.

Chisora has been in with many well-known fighters during his nine-year pro career. The problem is that Chisora has always lost those fights. Sometimes the fights have competitive, but the result is that Chisora losses when he steps up a level. He’s lost to guys like Vitali Klitschko, David Haye, Tyson Fury [x 2], Robert Helenius. Some boxing fans make a big production about how Chisora gave Vitali problems in their fight in 2012, but you have to remember that Vitali suffered a shoulder injury to his left shoulder in the 2nd round of that fight, and he was forced to fight with just one arm the last 10 rounds of the fight.

Even fighting with just his right hand, Vitali won a lopsided 12 round decision by the scores of 118-110, 118-110 and 119-111. That’s not bad for a 40-year-old heavyweight fighting with just one arm. Now if that had been Deontay Wilder who lost the use of his left hand in the 2nd round, I think he would have pole-axed Chisora with a big right hand in the same round. Deontay wins with his right hand, and Chisora would be at his mercy. I’m just saying. It would be a mismatch between Chisora and Deontay.

Pulev, 34, has had his own soft fights in winning his last two fights against 40-year-old Maurice Harris and 42-year-old Georgia Arias following Pulev’s 5th round knockout loss to former world champion Wladimir Klitschko in November 2014. Leading up to the Klitschko fight, Pulev had been doing great in beating the likes of Tony Thompson, Alexander Ustinov, Alexander Dimitrenko and Derric Rossy. The problem is those weren’t great heavyweights, and those victories happened many years ago.

When Pulev got inside the ring with Klitschko, he found out quickly that he wasn’t in the same league as him and the fight turned out to be a fairly one-sided affair. We had a warning that Pulev would be out of his element against Klitschko from Pulev’s fight against Tony Thompson in 2013.

Pulev struggled badly in the first half of the fight against an overweight Thompson. It wasn’t until Thompson gassed out in the 2nd half of the fight that Pulev was able to take over the fight.

Chisora is really up against it in this fight with Pulev. Unless Chisora lands one of his big rabbit punches to the back of Pulev’s head, I can’t see him winning this fight. This is a mismatch in my view. Chisora can throw a mean rabbit shot, and I don’t know if Pulev will be able to take too many of those types of punches if Chisora is in good form.

If I’m Pulev, I’d grow eyes in the back of my head to watch for those rabbits because Chisora is lethal with them. Chisora couldn’t do anything against the 6’9” Fury because he was so tall that he would lean away from Chisora when he’d throw his looping shots, and it was just too easy for Fury.