By Jeff Aranow: The fans and fighters are overwhelmingly picking heavyweight contender Dillian Whyte to defeat Dereck Chisora in their rematch tonight on Sky Box Office at the O2 Arena in London, UK. The reason the boxing world is going with the 30-year-old Whyte (24-1, 17 KOs) to win the fight, as you would guess, is he’s the fresher guy compared to the 34-year-old Chisora, who has been involved in some grueling matches over the years against David Haye, Vitali Klitschko, Kubrat Pulev, Whyte, Carlos Takam, Tyson Fury [x 2] and Robert Helenius. Even in the fights that Chisora has won, he’s taken a lot of hard shots to the head that has obviously had a wearing effect on him.
Whyte’s bad habit of fighting with anger when hit could hurt him in this fight. The last time Whyte fought Chisora, he was losing his cool each time he would get nailed by one of Del Boy’s powerful hooks. Whyte would then wade in and start throwing wild shots that made him look like a rank amateur, and not a highly ranked heavyweight contender on the world scene.
Whyte beat Chisora by a 12 round split decision in 2016, but the boxing fans didn’t agree with the results. They saw Chisora winning. As such, Whyte has a win that is viewed as a loss, and he’s coming into the fight as being seen as a guy that got a gift that he didn’t deserve. Whyte has won ever fight since his loss to Anthony Joshua in 2015, but of course, you have to put an asterisk next to Dillian’s win over Chisora in 2016. Since almost no one believes Whyte deserved the victory, his ring record is viewed as 23-2 with 17 knockouts instead of 24-1.
Whyte has only had several hard fights against Chisora, Anthony Joshua and Joseph Parker during his seven year pro career. What’s interesting is Whyte could have lost all three fights with better judging and quality referee working the matches. Whyte clearly got away with a massive amount of fouling against Parker, and then there’s the head-butt knockdown that he was given credit for in the 2nd round. The referee was missing in action for the Whyte vs. Parker fight. With a good referee, things could have been very different with Whyte losing points for fouling, and not getting a knockdown from a head-butt.
Jarrell ‘Big Baby’ Miller sees Whyte-Chisora 2 as a “50-50” fight. He sees Chisora as being in better shape than the previous match between them in 2016, and he feels that could be a factor in his favor.
“I still got it 50-50 in this fight…I think Chisora is in a lot better shape than the last fight,” ‘Big Baby’ Miller said to skysports.com. “We’ve seen Chisora improve, we haven’t seen much of Dillian Whyte’s improvement. Once he starts to get hit, he constantly goes wild, and that wildness and wild style will favor Chisora.”
Miller brings up some good points about the improvement that Chisora has made recently. He’s learning a a fighter at 34. Chisora’s recent performance against Carlos Takam in his last fight last July was impeccable to say the least. Behind in the fight through the first eight rounds, Chisora came on strong in the 8th round to knock Takam down twice to score a stoppage. That was a much different Chisora that we’d seen in the first seven rounds of the bout. It was like a switch flipping with the way that Chisora suddenly turned on his offense to snow Takam under.
Takam, 38, was not ready for that sudden surge of Adrenalin from Chisora. If Chisora turn it on like that against Whyte, he might stop him tonight. Joseph Parker had Whyte on the canvas in the 12th round last July when he unloaded his heavy artillery on him. Whyte was VERY lucky that Parker waited until the 12th round before he started going after him with his massive power shots. If he had done that earlier, Whyte would have been another knockout victim. Parker looked very powerful in the 12th round.
“Dillian Whyte is still on a winning streak since being put to sleep by AJ. We’re going to see. I give it 50-50 in my book,” Miller said.
Takam thinks Chisora will lose tonight, and he sees it as the same result as the first fight with Whyte. Takam isn’t saying it’s going to be another controversial win for Whyte, but if the fight plays out like the previous one, it’s hard to see it any other way.
Whyte needs to defeat Chisora to get to the prize that he wants in facing Anthony Joshua on April 13. Whyte feels he’s got the talent to defeat Joshua this time. Whyte’s left shoulder gave out on him in the second round in his fight with Joshua in 2015, and that prevented him from being able to go all out the way he needed to for him to get the stoppage. Joshua was hurt in round 2, but that was the round where Dillian suffered a shoulder injury that limited his power for the remainder of the fight.