By Tim Fletcher: Unbeaten British and Commonwealth heavyweight champion Anthony Joshua (15-0, 15 KOs) will be back inside the ring in four months from now on April 9th at the O2 Arena in London, UK, according to his promoter Eddie Hearn. The opponent could be 31-year-old former world title challenger Dereck Chisora (24-5, 16 KOs), who Hearn had fighting on the undercard last Saturday night fighting journeyman Jakov Gospic.
Chisora won the fight by a third round knockout after knocking the overweight Gospic down with a right hand to the head.
“I need to keep building and gaining experience,” Joshua said to Fightnews.com. “Chisora’s been a pro a long time. I need fights I have the capability of winning rather than do-or-die fights where I’m in at the deep end.”
Joshua and Hearn both want to exhaust all the top domestic level fighters in the UK before they move forward with facing the other fighters around the globe. Chisora is a natural choice for Joshua, as is David Haye. Those two heavyweights could come back to back in 2016 unless Hearn is a little more ambitious and wants to match Joshua with one of the world champions like Tyson Fury or Deontay Wilder.
Chisora has turned his career around with four straight wins since his 10th round retirement defeat against Fury last year in November 2014. Chisora has since beaten four journeyman level fighters in Jakov Gospic, Peter Erdos, Marcelo Luiz Nascimento and Beka Lobjanidze. Chisora’s fight against Erdos came just last week.
The promotional company Sauerland Event is looking to keep Chisora very busy to build him back up. If they could get a fight for him against Joshua, it would be an ideal situation because Chisora won’t be getting any world title shots anytime soon unless he works his way back to a No.1 spot somehow. That could take years unless one of the four sanctioning bodies takes an interest in Chisora and moves him quickly to No.1, as the World Boxing Organization did last year.
The 6’1” Chisora looked slow last night against Gospic, and it is hard to picture him being able to fight competitively against someone as big as the 6’6” Joshua. However, Chisora showed good stamina against Gospic, and did not look winded after two rounds as Whyte did last night against Joshua. If Chisora fight hard without tiring out quickly against Joshua then it could be an interesting fight.
Chisora has good punching power, and he is capable of landing his power shots against taller fighters unless their name is Tyson Fury. Whyte staggered Joshua in the 2nd round of their contest last night. It was a simple left hook that Whyte hit Joshua with, and it caused Joshua to lose his legs for a moment. If Chisora can do the same thing, he might have a chance of knocking Joshua out.
Hearn is probably thinking the Joshua-Chisora fight will be a mismatch, but a fight that would interest the British public. Hearn could then put it on Sky Box Office again like he did with the Joshua-Whyte fight. It’s not a PPV worthy fight, but that probably won’t stop Hearn from making it PPV anyway. Hearn can once again add middleweight Chris Eubank Jr, Tony Bellew, Kevin Mitchell and Luke Campbell to the card to interest the fans.
Getting Fury to agree to fight Joshua could be pointless endeavor right now for Hearn. Fury has a rematch with Wladimir Klitschko coming up, and if he wins that fight then he’ll very likely target the WBC title. If Alexander Povetkin beats Deontay Wilder in early 2016, it will setup a unification fight between Fury and Povetkin for the second half of 2016. Hearn is saying that he thinks a world title shot is in the cards for Joshua in 2016, but that doesn’t seem too likely unless he can convince WBA “regular” heavyweight champion Ruslan Chagaev to fight Joshua.
Chisora is a fighter who keeps getting chances for big fights despite his routine losses in those fights. He was beaten by former WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko three years ago in 2012, and Chisora was also beaten by David Haye and Tyson Fury twice. Chisora is now looking to get yet another chance. Eventually he’ll run out of chances and end up in the journeyman circuit.
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