Arreola Feels Chisora Will Do Better Than He Did With Vitali

By Keith Idec

Cristobal Arreola thinks Dereck Chisora will fare better against heavily favored Vitali Klitschko than he did.

“I like Chisora, man,” Arreola said to BoxingScene.com. “I give him a shot. Every heavyweight has a shot, because with heavyweights all it takes is one shot to knock somebody out. But Chisora has shown already he knows how to get on the inside. When he fought [Robert] Helenius, when he got robbed in that fight, he really showed he knows how to get inside. So I’m expecting an exciting fight. I’m hoping Chisora can pull it off, but we’ll see.”

London’s Chisora (15-2, 9 KOs) is about an 8-1 underdog entering his fight Saturday night in Munich, Germany, for the 6-foot-7 Klitschko’s WBC heavyweight title. But the 6-1 Chisora was very effective in his last fight against the 6-6½ Helenius (17-0, 11 KOs), whom Chisora clearly out-boxed, despite that Chisora lost a 12-round split decision Dec. 3 in Helsinki, Finland, where the Swedish-born Helenius now lives.

“The main thing is [Chisora] knows how to get inside,” said Arreola, who Vitali Klitschko stopped after 10 lopsided rounds in September 2009 in Los Angeles. “He has good head movement, and when he got inside [against Helenius] he didn’t just stand there. He worked and he threw punches.”

The Klitschko-Chisora fight will be broadcast live Saturday on EPIX, beginning at 4:30 p.m. ET/1:30 p.m. PT.

Arreola (34-2, 29 KOs), of Riverside, Calif., will fight Saturday night, too, in a 10-rounder against Eric Molina (18-1, 14 KOs), of Raymondville, Texas. The Arreola-Molina match will be televised on Showtime Extreme at 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT, before a “Showtime Championship Boxing” doubleheader that’ll pit Paul Williams (40-2, 27 KOs) against Japan’s Nobuhiro Ishida (24-6-2, 9 KOs) in the 12-round, junior middleweight main event from Corpus Christi, Texas.

Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com.