Dereck Chisora tells Frank Warren GIVE me $5 million I’ll fight Joyce or Dubois

By Boxing News - 10/18/2019 - Comments

By Charles Brun: High level heavyweight gatekeeper Dereck Chisora says his asking price to promoter Frank Warren is $5 million for him to agree to fight either Daniel Dubois or Joe Joyce. As far as the 35-year-old Chisora (31-9, 22 KOs) is concerned, that’s what he’s going to need to be paid for him to take on one of Warren’s two up and coming heavyweights.

Unfortunately, the $5 million that Chisora is asking Warren is a figure that he likely won’t get. That’s a huge amount of money that Chisora is asking for in what would be a non-world title fight, and not realistic at all. For Chisora to get that kind of money, he would likely need to challenge Anthony Joshua, Andy Ruiz Jr. or Deontay Wilder.

Given Chisora’s record, he may have a difficult time even getting one-fourth of his $5 million asking price. You can’t blame Chisora for wanting to get the most green that he can for fighting Joyce or Dubois, but asking for an absurd amount of money is off-putting.

The young 22-year-old Dubois is the Commonwealth heavyweight champion. In other words, he holds a domestic level title right now. As for Joyce, he’s the WBA Gold heavyweight champions. That’s not the World Boxing Association’s Super World heavyweight title, which is currently held by Andy Ruiz Jr.

Chisora accustomed to fighting on Sky Box Office

What makes it tough to get Chisora as an opponent for Dubois (13-0, 12 KOs) or Joyce is the fact that Matchroom Boxing have been putting him in main events on Sky Box Office. With Chisora making good money fighting the likes of David Price, Artur Szpilka, Senad Gashi and Dillian Whyte, why would he be willing to take risky matches against Joyce or Dubois unless he gets cash out level money?

Chisora’s little rant at the recent Regis Prograis vs. Josh Taylor press conference showed that he views himself as a headline level fighter, not an undercard guy. Dereck was upset with Matchroom promoter Eddie Hearn for placing him as the chief support for the light welterweight unification fight between unbeaten #1 Prograis (24-0, 20 KOs) and #2 Taylor (15-0, 12 KOs). It didn’t matter to Chisora that his fight won’t involve a world title. He still felt that he deserved to be in the main event.

Is Chisora pricing himself out intentionally?

If Chisora doesn’t fancy the idea of facing Dubois or Joyce, then asking for $5 million is a good way of making sure the fights never happen.

The question is does Chisora now have a sense of entitlement due to him being involved as the B-side opponent countless times during his career? Chisora has lost a lot of fights against A-side guys, and he’s in demand as an opponent. He’s only fought for a world title once in his career against former World Boxing Council heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko in February 2011.

Vitali didn’t have to give Chisora a title, being that it was a voluntary defense for him. The 6’7″ Klitschko gave Chisora a world title shot even though he’d lost 2 out of his 3 previous fights in defeats against Robert Helenius and Tyson Fury.

Chisora ended up losing to Vitali by a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision. Luckily for Chisora, Vitali injured his left shoulder in the 2nd round, and was forced to fight with just his right hand for the remainder of the fight. Before the injury occurred, Vitali was unloading on Chisora, and it looked like the fight wasn’t going to go more than 2 or 3 rounds.

Chisora says his asking price is $5M to fight Dubois or Joyce

“He’s got Daniel Dubois and Joe Joyce. Those are the only two fighters he’s go, said Chisora to secondsout about Warren.  “He’s like, ‘Oh, we offered him money.’ He didn’t offer me any money. He offered me $150,000. I don’t need your $150,000. I told him if you want the fight to get done, give me $5 million, and I will turn up and I will do the business. That’s it,” said Chisora.

The 34-year-old Joyce (10-0, 9 KOs) is just a year younger than Chisora, but he’s still on the upward, and a great future ahead of him.

Chisora is fighting on October 26 against David Price (25-6, 20 KOs) in the co-feature bout on the Prograis-Taylor card on Sky Box Office at the O2 Arena in London, England. If Chisora loses to Price, then he can forget about getting any high level fight. His time as a serviceable B-level opponent could be nearing it’s end.

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