Does Chisora have the talent to become heavyweight champion?

By Boxing News - 05/24/2010 - Comments

Image: Does Chisora have the talent to become heavyweight champion?By Scott Gilfoid: After stopping Danny Williams in the 2nd round on May 15th, British heavyweight champion Derek Chisora (13-0, 8 KO’s) outlined his future path in saying he wants to go after the European title next and then onwards towards a world title shot. However, as good as I think Chisora is on the local level, I haven’t spotted anything in his game that would make me think he can be anymore than a bottom feeder at the world level. To be sure, Chisora, 26, has the youth going for him and can certainly wait out the Klitschko brothers in the future until they retire.

However, Chisora is short at only 6’1”, not particularly fast and not the hugest puncher by far in the heavyweight division. I see a lot of bad losses ahead of him once he moves out of the local fight scene and starts taking on better opposition at the world level. Right now, I think Chisora is a good bottom 15 fighter and that’s a compliment to him. But if you put Chisora in with some decent top 15 heavyweights like Tony Thompson, Chris Arreola, Denis Boytsov and Samuel Peter, I see bad things happening to him, like him getting totally dominated and stopped.

At the British level, I think Chisora is great, easily the best of the lot, but that’s not saying, is it? There’s just not much talent at heavyweight in the UK and Chisora is like a big fish in a small pond. I’d like to see him wipe out Tyson Fury before he moves forward to facing his destiny at the world level. I think Fury is a very winnable fight for Chisora as long as he can get inside on the 6’9” Fury and pound him into submission.

Beyond the local level, I don’t know what Chisora can do to improve. He kind of has maxed his potential and has his foot to the floor in terms of getting the most out of his short 6’1” body. If he incredibly hand speed or huge punching power like Mike Tyson, he would have no problem. But Chisora is never very fast nor all that big of a puncher. He’s basically a short, slow combination puncher and believe me, those fighters are a dime a dozen at the world level. If you put him in with a big slugger like Peter or a really fast one like Odlanier Solis, I see bad things happening to Chisora.



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