LONDON – The mad world of Derek Chisora is madder even than the boxing world he lives in.
On a spring Wednesday in Central London, Chisora reaches out his hand and politely says, “How are you?”
The skies are blue, traffic is steady and people stop and stare at the heavyweight contender as he mooches from café to café with BoxingScene in tow.
He waves to restaurant owners, chats with others and ultimately decides where to go to conduct this interview and a separate one with The Guardian’s venerable Donald McRae.
We go into a back room of a boujee eatery with hefty cutlery, traditional tablecloths and mahogany panels on the walls.
Somehow, Chisora knew Nigel Farage, head of the political party Reform, was in the building, and the fighter asked his waiter to go and fetch one of the UK’s most influential politicians to visit him at his table.
“Tell him Derek Chisora’s here,” Chisora informs the staff member.
Moments later, Farage arrives.
They’ve been pictured together before, “Delboy” and Nigel, but the Five Guys-eating heavyweight shakes hands with the politician and they make jovial small talk before Farage returns to his table and Chisora goes back to his interviews.
Is it surreal for London’s Chisora that, as a child born in Zimbabwe, he has power and influence that reaches far beyond boxing?
“Oh, yeah,” Chisora says, smiling nonchalantly.
“Have you seen my phone book? It’s a badass phone book.”
“Can I look?” he’s asked.
“I can’t show you. It’s mad.”
“Who would you say is the most famous person in that phone book, then?”
“Anthony Joshua,” he says, smiling.
“But don't your kids go to school together?”
“Yeah.”
“I’ve got Donald Trump Jnr and a lot of people.”
“Is there any political future for you? Is that something that you want to go into?”
“Nah. I’d like to be the guy in the background.”
*
Derek Chisora is not often in the background. He is at the forefront, making his considerable presence felt, heckling, joking, and he is far from the rear of the heavyweight pack.
Having run up high career mileage, the 49-bout veteran Chisora (36-13, 23 KOs) puts his recent winning form down to the good will of God. Yet it wasn’t His heavy hands that saw off Gerald Washington, Joe Joyce and Otto Wallin in the past three fights of what has become an impressive late act for the 42-year-old Chisora.
But people, like yours truly, have been pleading with Chisora to retire for years. The wars will surely have taken their toll.
“Give me a fight,” he says. “If I fight, train hard and I win it, I win it. You know, it’s just fight by fight, day by day.”
It is, of course, not quite that simple. But nothing about Chisora’s complex story has been, including his switch from villain to, shall we say, anti-hero.
Asked when public sentiment changed, he identifies the moment he shelled Carlos Takam with an almighty overhand right in 2018 that triggered the now famous cheers of, “Ooooohhh, De-rek Chi-sor-a.”
“I think Carlos Takam,” he says, smiling at the memory. “And then that was it. And then the ‘War Chisora’ gravy train just kicked off. It was everything about it. And then that same year, [I was] born again. I partnered up with David Haye to manage me and stuff like that, show me another way of training and stuff like that, so it’s quite cool.”
Does he prefer the cheers over what had become familiar boos?
“I don’t know,” he replies. “I prefer people just buying tickets, coming in and enjoying the fights. I’ve had both. I’ve had boos. If you’re telling me, do I prefer boos or cheers, I pick cheers.”
Chisora contends he never tried to be a man who fans loved to hate. As divisive as he has been, it has been about being who he is rather than trying to be something he is not. He is unpredictable, no matter the surroundings. He’s a grenade with the pin half out.
“No, they just hated me because they wanted to,” he says. “But I said, you know what? Hating me means you’re going to buy tickets. Come and watch me either way. I didn’t really care.”
“Hate” is a strong word. But Chisora’s rap sheet of bad behavior stretches almost as long as his record.
“I think they hated it, but now they like it,” he adds. “So who knows?”
“But you’re the good guy now?”
“I still do the same nonsense, but now you look at it in different eyes.”
Asked what the wildest thing he has done is, he sighs: “The maddest thing I’ve done? I don’t know, man, I don’t know.”
With that, he is reminded, in short order, of kissing Carl Baker at a weigh-in, slapping Vitali Klitschko, spitting water at Vitali’s brother Wladimir, throwing a table at a press conference with Dillian Whyte and brawling with David Haye in Munich.
“That’s off the top of my head,” I say to him.
“I don’t know, man, it’s alright. It’s just everyday life. It's everyday life.”
Is the table we are seated at safe, considering this line of questioning?
“Yeah, it’s marble, so it’s alright.”
And has he gone too far with any of the above?
“No.”
**
Chisora made his debut in February 2007 on the undercard of one of the great modern British fights, when Australia’s Michael Katsidis and Luton’s Graham Earl went to war. His second contest came in front of more than 40,000 fans at Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, against veteran Tony Booth, in the bout before Joe Calzaghe blitzed Peter Manfredo.
“And they fucking booed me,” he quickly slips in.
“Straight away. Bastards.”
But Chisora reflects with a smile. Even though he has reinvented himself and been through so much – much of it self-inflicted – he says he has appreciated the whole journey. He can’t pick out a favorite phase.
“I’ve enjoyed all of it, mate,” he said. “You don’t understand. I’ve loved it. I enjoyed it. It’s made me so happy.”
With that, Chisora sends a voice note to a team member to extend the parking on his car.
His smart car, with the registration plate 4 WAR, is parked across the street.
It is understated, aside from the personalised plate, but handy for his jaunts around the capital.
There won’t be many in the heavyweight rankings who would squeeze themselves into such a vehicle, and Chisora is No. 2 with the IBF, sits at No. 7 with the WBO and at No. 13 with the WBC.
It is a lively division; all eyes will turn to it on April 4 at the O2 in London, where Chisora will fight Deontay Wilder in the 50th professional fight of both of their careers.
Chisora has been a contender, a gatekeeper and – dare one say it? – a journeyman through his career. He has also faced the majority of the best big men of his era.
When asked who is the best he has boxed, his reply comes in an instant.
“Oleksandr.”
He delivers it in a way that makes you wonder about the validity of the question, and then you think back to the fact he has fought Vitali Klitschko, Tyson Fury, Haye, et al.
“Movement. Movement,” he says, when asked why Usyk has risen to the top.
“He beats everybody by movement. Because, remember, in boxing we are trained to hit a target and not move our feet. But Oleksandr, he hits the target, moves, changes angles and moves on this side and moves on that side. So it’s quite difficult. I knew he was going to be the man because everybody else was ducking him. I boxed him, and then his next big fight was with AJ at Tottenham. Great fight; he won it. And then the return fight, again, he won it. And then from there, I knew he was going to be a superstar.”
So why did Chisora do better against Usyk than he did in three fights with Tyson Fury?
“I don’t know,” he initially replies.
But Chisora pauses to think and then comes up with a longer answer.
“Coaches, trainers. … I boxed Tyson Fury three times with Don Charles. And Oleksandr, I boxed with Alex and Marios [Demetriades, from the London Shootfighters gym]. So this is who I’m with, Alex and Marios.”
Chisora points to the era of Floyd Mayweather Jnr, Ricky Hatton and Manny Pacquiao as the one that really hooked him.
“In the golden era of HBO, you remember all that?” he says.
“We used to wake up in the morning, put the TV on and start watching HBO from New York Madison Square Garden or the MGM. That was my era watching boxing. And Don King Promotions and stuff like that.”
Chisora mentioning Hatton by name is interesting, not least because they cut very different personalities. Perhaps more pertinently is that Hatton toiled badly in retirement, culminating in his death in 2025, aged just 47.
By his own admission, Chisora is addicted to fighting, so how will he cope when he no longer has boxing in his life? Does he have concerns about giving up the job? He has long said this next fight, with Wilder, will mark his conclusion in the sport.
“It depends,” he says, shrugging. “When you retire at the top, you have to go see a psychologist or a therapist to put you on the right track. Because without seeing a therapist, you’re just going in a rabbit hole. So that’s all I do. But you have to [be prepared for life after sport]. I don’t care. Anybody out there, if you’re ready to put the gloves down or the football boots down, you’ve got to see a therapist.”
Because how do you go from being in an arena with 20,000 singing your name to being a civilian?
“It’s a drug, yeah,” Chisora agrees. “Fighting is a drug. I’ve been doing it since I was 16, 17. But now I’m 42. The high point is actually the whole build-up to it. You know, you start training and you’re not good at your skill at that moment. And by the time you get to the fight, you’re amazing. You’re firing on all cylinders. And then suddenly you fight for about 36 minutes, you win the fight. And then, wow, you’re pumped up. And then you’re looking for another one. The moment you walk out of the ring, you're crashing. It’s downhill. You crash. It's a fucking big crash, bro.”
***
It is accurate to say that a few opponents Chisora has faced have failed tests for banned substances, including Fury, Dillian Whyte and Robert Helenius. Chisora won’t say whether he thinks PEDs are rife within boxing, but he emphasizes his belief that there should be zero tolerance for cheats.
“If you fail a drug test, 10 years,” he says abruptly.
When it is pointed out to him that a decade is almost an entire career, he doubles down.
“Ten years,” he says. “Banned, that's it. There should be nothing else. It doesn’t matter what the excuse or reason is, if you’re positive, you’re out.”
Of course, Chisora’s career now spans nearly 20 years. To a degree, that surprises even him.
“The other day, I watched one of my fights and I said to my wife, ‘I don’t know why I’m boxing, because I can’t box,” he says, laughing. “I don’t [often] look at my fights. From the one in Wembley you first saw, to the one I’m fighting with Deontay Wilder, I would never see my fights.”
It was in 2012 when Chisora, a pro novice, really, traveled to Germany to face then WBC heavyweight titleholder Vitali Klitschko. Not long before, he had been due to face Wladimir, who pulled out because of an injury in the days before the bout. Chisora surprised many that night, showing courage and bravery and giving Klitschko one of his hardest fights.
“I don’t know if I just survived, I don’t know. The only thing I know, I retired him after that fight. Good fun, though.”
Klitschko beat Manuel Charr seven months later and walked away.
Boxing might be fun for Chisora, but it is also dangerous. When Chisora was linked to a fight with Wilder several years ago, there were legitimate concerns for his health. Now, with Wilder’s subsequent decline and Chisora’s purple patch, the odds have leveled, but the issue of Chisora’s future health cannot be ignored.
And whether this is really “fight No. 50 and out” remains to be seen.
It was MF Pro, which promotes the O2 event, that pitched the bout to both boxers “with the right numbers.”
“People are always concerned about people’s health,” Chisora says. “They need to be concerned about their own health. Because at the end of the day, you see how life is here. It’s like ... people are always concerned about other people. When you phone up, those people say, ‘Oh, mate, I can’t pay my rent. I can’t pay my mortgage. Can you help me out?’
‘[It’s] oh, can I call you back?’
“But really and truly, they’re not concerned about that. It’s bullshit. They’re just jealous because they can’t do what I’m doing. Because in their life, they’re failing. It’s jealousy. It’s just ... it’s a waste.”
Chisora is then told that people are worried for him, for all he has given of himself in the ring.
“But I’m not punchy, though,” he says. “I’m alright.”
He is also aware of his high ratings with the sanctioning bodies. Victory over Wilder, and he will remain a top contender. And he maintains he would be more than happy to still call it a day.
“Why not?” he replies, when asked if he could retire in that position.
“Because you’re one step from the promised land.” he’s told.
“I’m in promised land already, mate,” Chisora says. “I can go anywhere I want. I can walk in. I can shake hands with anybody I want. I’m already in promised land. I already made it. I don’t need a belt to make it.”
Chisora is an anomaly in more ways than one. He is one of the few top heavyweights to not feature on one of the Riyadh Season shows. When asked why, he initially says: “Ask Turki.”
Then he explains that he initially turned down a fight with Jarrell Miller and has not been summoned since by Saudi Arabian financier Turki Alalshikh.
“From there, they just blacklisted me, but I don’t really care,” he continues. “I’m fine, I’m fine. I don’t need to be on Saudi shows to prove my anything. I’m fucking happy.”
****
There are clearly multiple sides to Chisora. The spectre of the Wilder fight and Chisora’s addiction to his profession looms over everything. In a bid to see his passion shine through, I ask him to place himself at the curtain for the Wilder ringwalk and to talk about the goosebumps of excitement he will feel.
“Goosebumps, man. I get goosebumps when I hang out with my kids,” he says. “For me, it’s just a fight.”
His children are 11, six and one. With that, Chisora reaches for his phone and shows me a video of his middle child hitting a punch bag.
Does he want them to box?
“If he wants to box, yeah,” Chisora said. “I made these sacrifices so they don’t have to do it. [He can] do whatever he wants to do. He could be a political leader. He can do whatever he wants to do. I’ll just direct him.”
With that, Chisora and I talk about some of our interactions over the 20 years we have known one another. When I picked Wladimir Klitschko to defeat him on Sky Sports, the next time I saw him he said he would have me kidnapped. Years later, at a Boyz II Men concert in Wembley, we spoke for a long time about real life as our wives powdered their noses.
“Exactly. It depends what mood I’m in,” he says, fiendishly grinning. “It depends what side of the bed I woke up on.”
We are part of the same sport, in very different roles and with different pasts and doubtless going in different directions. But it is Chisora’s human side that is easily his most alluring. Talking about life’s small pleasures might be comparatively boring to some, but he radiates warmth as he leans in and confides: “Mate, can I be honest? My bubble and everybody’s bubble is totally different, man. My bubble is, I live life, bro. I enjoy life. Yeah. I don’t mess around. The people around me, they are surprised with how I enjoy life. I don’t enjoy life, but when I say enjoy life, I don’t say, ‘Oh, we go out and party, we go out here.’ No, no, no.
“I enjoy life with the people around me. Like this Sunday, I’m making a Sunday roast. I’m with about 18 of my friends and their wives and their kids, and I’m making them a Sunday roast. The kids are in the garden playing, and that's how I enjoy life. On Friday, happy Fridays at my house, people come with their wives and just chill. That’s how I enjoy life. I don’t enjoy life by getting on a plane. No, no, no. I enjoy life where I am. I bought a beautiful house. Very, very homely. So, my friends come with their kids. Everybody’s welcome, as long as you’re a good person.”
What about material things?
“They used to drive me a long time ago, and they’re not anymore,” he says, shaking his head.
“That’s my only car,” he says, referring to the smart car.
I interrupt: “Because Fury told me he drove this old estate, but he’s got some mad cars as well.”
“Fury likes cars,” Chisora replies. “Tyson likes cars. You know, Tyson loves cars. Because it’s a Traveller thing, it’s a gypsy thing. They love cars. I don’t.”
“Didn’t you have a car phase?”
“No, I never had a car phase.
“I bought an ML. If I want to drive something, I’ll buy it, and I’ll drive it for a while.
“Right now, I’m like, I want to buy a new car and I’ll go to the showroom, and they’ll drop it to my house. And then I’m like, ‘I don’t need it.’ And phone them back, and I’ll figure out why I don’t want it.”
Chisora was an enigma when he came on to the scene in 2007. He remains so now.
*****
We shake hands and part ways. Moments later, I hear a roar of “Oi oi” and Chisora puts his head out of his smart car and shouts, “See you later!”
“Was that Derek Chisora?” a passer-by asks me.
Chisora would have liked that.
“It was,” I answered, not quite sure how surreal the moment was.
I’d asked Chisora earlier in the conversation about fame, people wanting photos and being mobbed some of the time.
“It’s OK,” he said. “You know, there’s a saying: You should be happy when they’re asking for photos. You should be more upset when they don’t ask for photos anymore. It’s quite sad when they don't ask. When they ask for photos, I don’t mind.”
It was something he never believed would happen.
“Nah, I never thought about that,” he said.
And just like that, he was on his way.
Through the London traffic and on his way to fight number 50 with Wilder.
Tris Dixon covered his first amateur boxing fight in 1996. The former editor of Boxing News, he has written for a number of international publications and newspapers, including GQ and Men’s Health, and is a board member for the Ringside Charitable Trust and the Ring of Brotherhood. He has been a broadcaster for TNT Sports and hosts the popular “Boxing Life Stories” podcast. Dixon is a British Boxing Hall of Famer, an International Boxing Hall of Fame elector, a BWAA award winner, and is the author of five boxing books, including “Damage: The Untold Story of Brain Trauma in Boxing” (shortlisted for the William Hill Sportsbook of the Year), “Warrior: A Champion’s Search for His Identity” (shortlisted for the Sunday Times International Sportsbook of the Year) and “The Road to Nowhere: A Journey Through Boxing’s Wastelands.” You can reach him @trisdixon on X and Instagram.
