By Charles Brun: David Haye is sending a warning to Oleksandr Usyk ahead of his fight next month against Derek Chisora on October 31. The heavyweight division is different from the cruiserweights, and one punch can change the outcome of a battle.
Usyk (17-0, 11 KOs) is confident that he’ll have little problems defeating the 36-year-old former world title challenger Chisora (32-9, 23 KOs) in their fight on Sky Box Office pay-per-view.
Oleksandr is risking a huge payday that will earn him millions as the WBO mandatory for world champion Anthony Joshua. If Usyk, 33, loses to Chisora, the WBO mandatory position will change hands, and leave the 2012 Olympic gold medalist out in the cold.
Chisora knows what’s at stake in this fight, and he badly wants to fight for a world title again. It’s been eight years since Dereck challenged former WBC heavyweight champion Vitali Klitschko for his title in 2012, and it didn’t turn out well for Chisora.
Usyk doesn’t realize the heavyweight division is different
He lost a one-sided 12 round unanimous decision against a one-armed fighter. Vitali tore up his left shoulder in the second round, and he switched to southpaw and used his right hand as his lead hand and was able to win comfortably.
Little did Chisora know at the time that he would go through the next eight years without fighting for a world title. That can change if Chisora defeats Usyk to take his WBO mandatory status.
“What Usyk doesn’t understand, the heavyweight division is very different from every other division in boxing. It’s about size, it’s about weight and one shot,” said Haye to Sky Sports.
“Ask Alexander Povetkin. One shot is all it takes to turn the tide. Anything can happen. In the heavyweight division, it’s so up in the air.
“But when Derek is doing what he’s been doing in sparring against good quality opposition every day, the gaps that he used to have are getting filled in with good quality action. He’s going to cause an upset and it’s going to shock so many people,” said Haye.
For Chisora to win this fight, he’s going to have to have to get in punching distance without getting his head jabbed off. Usyk has already shown against his other opponents in the pro ranks that he’s not easy to hit consistently.
Dereck needs to land his shots
It’s not good for Chisora if he’s only able to land an occasional shot against Usyk because he’s not a big enough puncher for him to knock him out if he’s only landing rarely. We saw in Chisora’s 12 round majority decision loss to Agit Kabayel in 2017 that he has a lot of trouble landing shots against fighters that move around the ring.
The light-hitting Kabayel had punching power simular to Usyk, and he moved as much as him and Chisora was as helpless as a kitten against him. It didn’t matter that Kabayel was just an average heavyweight. He was still able to outbox Chisora and make him look bad in the process.
It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out that Usyk will be on the move the entire fight, and he won’t let Dereck have a lot of chances to land his best shots. At 215 pounds, Usyk is built to move and evade the 260+ pound Chisora, and it’s going to be a nightmare for Delboy if he can’t get near enough to him to land his shots.
“I don’t think, in the heavyweight game, there is anybody stronger than me right now,” said Chisora. “Anthony Joshua, Tyson Fury, Dillian Whyte, Deontay Wilder? No, they aren’t stronger than me.”
Chisora not powerful enough
Dereck might lift more weights than some or all of those fighters, but he certainly doesn’t possess more power than Wilder or Joshua. That’s obvious. Chisora’s power will be useless if he can’t land his shots against a moving target like Usyk.
Tony Bellew was able to land his counter shots on Usyk, but he had faster hands than him and took advantage of that. Chisora doesn’t possess the same hand speed as Bellew, so he’s not going to be able to count on landing shots on Usyk unless he can cut off the ring on him and trap him.
It’s likely that if Chisora does trap Usyk, he’ll get tied up with a clinch, and he won’t be able to get his punches off.
If Chisora could punch like Deontay Wilder or Mike Tyson, he would have a good chance of winning even if he doesn’t land a lot of shots in the fight. Dereck would only need to land a small number of punches to hurt Usyk and take him out.
We all saw Usyk staggered by Murat Gassiev in their fight in the World Boxing Super Series tournament in 2018. However, Gassiev wasn’t able to land enough of his punches to finish Usyk off after he’d hurt him.