By Matt Stein: Frank Warren, the promoter for unbeaten British heavyweight champion Dereck Chisora (14-0, 9 KO’s) believes that his upcoming fight against IBF/WBO heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (55-3, 49 KO’s) will be a more competitive fight than Wladimir’s brother’s recent one-sided 12 round decision win over Shannon Briggs a week ago.

In his column at thesun.co.uk, Warren says “I feel Dereck’s fight against Wladimir will be more competitive than Vitali against Briggs.” Warren doesn’t say why he feels this way, however. I don’t know that I agree with Warren on this. For starters, I think Briggs is a better fighter than Chisora and has a better chin. I don’t think Chisora will be able to last 12 rounds against Wladimir. If Warren means competitive while it lasts, maybe.

Chisora is short, and lacks the reach, power or the hand speed to adequately compete with Wladimir. He’s going to have problems landing his wide punches in the fight. Chisora may not do much landing at all. If you look at his fight with Sam Sexton in September, Chisora ran around on the outside trying to avoid getting hit when Sexton was on offense. It didn’t work that well for Chisora, as he was still hit by a lot of hard jabs from the 6’3″ Sexton.

Chisora used a lot of head movement in that fight, yet he was hit quite often by Sexton. Chisora might as well not moved his head at all because he seemed to be mostly wasting energy. And when he was moving, he wasn’t doing well. Wladimir is probably going to be jabbing Chisora hard from the start of the fight, and if Chisora reacts the same way he did against Sexton, you can probably expect for him to try and move around on the outside.

Chisora retreated to the ropes a lot against Sexton and covered up. If he does this against Wladimir, the fight will likely end very quickly. I can’t see Chisora lasting more than one or two rounds if he backs up to the ropes and just covers up like a sparring partner. Wladimir hits too hard and when he has a stationary target like Chisora, he’s deadly.