By William Mackay: Unbeaten heavyweight Tyson Fury (6-0, 6 KOs) wants a shot at Derek Chisora (10-0, 5 KOs), for June 13th. Fury’s promoter Mick Hennesy has already made an offer to Chisora’s promoter for the open date on the 13th next month, so now the ball is in Chisora’s court. Previously, Chisora said that he’d be willing to fight Fury at a days notice. Obviously, he meant that in jest but he seemed to see Fury as no threat to him.
Chisora wants to get a shot at British heavyweight champion Danny Williams next. However, Fury feels that Chisora should first fight him in a title eliminator match with the winner getting a shot at Williams.
Last Saturday night, the 6’9″ Fury put on an impressive punching display stopping the 6’7″ Scott Belshaw with a series of hard body shots. Fury knocked Belshaw down twice in the first round with big lefts and rights to the body, and bloodied his nose. In the 2nd, Fury hit Belshaw with a hard left that badly hurt him.
The referee then stopped the bout with Belshaw in bad shape and not in the position to defend himself anymore against Fury. Since his last fight a month ago in April against Matthew Ellis, a first round knockout, Fury appears to have improved a great deal. He was using jabs a lot more, moving well and using feints.
In the past, Fury was more about pure slugging and mostly pawed with his jab rather than throwing it with authority like Saturday night’s bout. Fury also looked more in shape than he was in the past with less visible fat on his frame.
After the bout, Fury said that he had been sparring with some big Ukrainians while training for the Belshaw bout, which might help explain the improvement in Fury’s boxing skills. Overall, Fury looked like a much more polished fighter than he had been in the past and was much better at using his height and reach to dominate his opponent.
Chisora, 25, defeated Paul Butlin by an eight round decision last Friday night, a bout that Chisora looked good at times when on offense, but suffered for his bad defense. Chisora worked Butlin over with body shots with both hands for most of the fight.
However, Chisora had a bad habit of turning his head when he’d punch, taking his eyes off his opponent. Butlin took advantage of this to tag Chisora often with lefts and rights to the head. Butlin didn’t have much power, though, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been for Chisora.
In the 5th round, Chisora appeared to take a bite from Butlin’s left ear, causing him to pull back in pain. It was a strange round and an even stranger move, because Butlin was a punching bag at that point and doing little in the round other than to clinch every now and then.
In rounds six through eight, Chisora outworked Butlin with big body and head shots. However, many of Chisora’s punches were wide and he looked vulnerable to punches down the middle. Chisora also seemed very tired in the last couple of rounds and was breathing heavy.
Fury wasn’t happy with Chisora’s apparent bite episode, saying that it’s not good for boxing. Fury thinks that Chisora doesn’t want to fight him, and says that Belshaw hurt Chisora in sparring with big body shots. Due to the things that occurred in Chisora’s bout with Butlin, Fury feels that this is another reason why Chisora should fight him first rather than be allowed to go straight into a title bout against the British champion Williams.
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