By Scott Gilfoid: Former heavyweight world title challenger Dereck Chisora (25-6, 17 KOs) will be taking a stay busy confidence booster type fight next month on September 10 against little known Drazan Janjanin (13-7, 12 KOs) in a scheduled eight round fight fat the Hovet in Stockholm. It’s hard to know what Chisora is hoping to accomplish with all these tune-up fights at this stage in his career.
If the fight against the 27-year-old Janjanin was the first fight against a low level opponent for Chisora in many years, then I could understand it, but this is his sixth weak opponent in his last seven fights. Chisora was beaten by Tyson Fury by a 10th round knockout in November 2014.
(Photo Credit: Sebastian Heger)
After that loss, Chisora burned through a year and a half of his career beating fodder opposition in Beka Lobjanidze, Marcelo Luiz Nascimento, Peter Erdos, Jakov Gospic and Andras Csomor. After beating those guys and wasting valuable time in his career, Chisora stepped it up and was whipped by Pulev last May. Now after that deeat, Chisora is going back to fighting fodder opposition in facing the no name Janjanin on September 10. I don’t know about you, but I think it’s stupid as heck the way Chisora is being matched.
I can’t believe he’s agreeing to being matched against such weak opposition for prolonged periods of his career. You normally don’t see that kind of thing for fighters this far along in their careers, because they can’t afford to burn up their careers fighting 3rd tier opposition if they want to make money.
The fact that Chisora letting himself get matched like this is troubling, because he’s wasting too much time. After Chisora’s loss to Pulev, he should be fighting actual contenders, not guys like Janjanin. What is a fight like that going to do for Chisora other than wasting time with his career? I think it’s stupid, but oh well, if Chisora wants to burn up another year and a half of his career fighting fodder, then it’s on him.
The 32-year-old Chisora wa beaten in his last fight in a failed attempt to win the vacant EBU heavyweight title against Kubrat Pulev last May. Chisora lost the fight by a 12 round split decision. The judge that scored it for Chisora was being very kind to him, because he got battered and beaten by Pulev. I mean, I have no idea what the judge was thinking that scored the fight to Chisora by the score 115-113. I had Pulev winning 10 rounds to 2 in a totally one-sided fight from start to finish.
The good news for Chisora is that he’s still ranked at #11 IBF, #15 WBC in the heavyweight division despite his recent loss to the 35-year-old Pulev. The bad news is that if Chisora decides to fight six or seven 3rd tier fighters in a row like he did after his loss to Tyson Fury in 2014, it means he probably won’t take his next meaningful fight until late 2017 or 2018.
‘’This is the fight game,’’ said Chisora. ‘’If you lose, you have to rebuild and come back. I lost a close fight to Pulev, but I’m still in a good position. I want a rematch, but let’s see if they give it to me. Either way, there are a lot big fights out there for me, and I’m ready to fight anyone.’’
Nah, Chisora needs to stay far, far away from the 6’4 ½” Pulev. I wouldn’t make that fight in a million years if I was the management for Chisora. Of course, I would have never agreed to put Chisora in with Pulev in the first place. I would have known that nothing good could come from that fight, because Pulev is too big, too talented, and has too good defensively for the likes of Chisora. If those two guys were to face each other 100 times, Chisora would lose all 100 times in my opinion.
Instead of going after Pulev and absorbing another loss, Chisora needs to focus on getting ranked high by the International Boxing Federation so that he can get a big payday fight against IBF champion Anthony Joshua. That’s the smart thing to do. Fighting Pulev is again is a royally dumb thing to do. Chisora needs to follow the David Haye plan of getting ranked high by scouting out mediocre fringe contenders that few boxing fans have heard of and then look to pad his record with those wins.
Chisora’s promoters at Sauerland Events should have deep enough pockets to get him fights against the likes of #15 IBF Dominic Breazeale, #10 IBF Charles Martin, #12 IBF David Price, #8 IBF Eric Molina, #9 IBF Jarrell “Big Baby” Miller, #7 Vyacheslav Glazkov, #6 IBF Carlos Takam, or #4 Johann Duhaupas. Surely, Chisora can beat some of those guys. Chisora couldn’t beat all of them, but he’d be able to beat enough of them to get ranked fast. But if Chisora keeps facing 3rd tier guys like Janjanin, then he’s going to be moved up the rankings at a glacial pace. In other words, Chisora needs to fight actual contenders, even if they’re guys with inflated rankings like the bottom feeders that David Haye has been beating since he started his comeback.
It doesn’t help to fight gawd awful fighters like the ones that Chisora has mostly been padding his record with since his loss to Fury, because the sanctioning bodies don’t rank fighters quickly when they see them beating weak opponents. The sanctioning bodies have caught on to this trick, and they’re not responsive like they used to be in my view. The best way to quickly get ranked at the very top of IBF is for Chisora to go after some real scalps like one of the aforementioned contenders.
What Chisora does need is for him to waste two or three years of his career getting SLOWLY ranked by him beating guys that few boxing fans have ever heard of. That’s a backwards way of getting ranked. When I see heavyweights taking the approach that Chisora has tanking to get ranked, it makes me wonder if there’s a confidence issue. I mean, if Chisora believed that he was capable of beating actual contenders to get ranked fast, wouldn’t he be going that route? I’m just saying.