Tyson Fury and Derek Chisora ​​complete their trilogy and promise to distract the World Cup crowd for a while

If another boxer had announced retirements and returns so lightly and in such a short space of time, he would surely have been disowned. Had another boxer picked an obviously inferior opponent for an event he claimed to (falsely) present as historic, he would surely have met with rejection from fans of the sport. However, Tyson Fury has not suffered from this. Quite the opposite: this Saturday it will ignite a crowd in the Tottenham Hotspur stadium in London when I face Zimbabwe Derek Chisora in his thirdFirst World Boxing Council heavyweight title defence. The contest will start around 6:00 pm and will be broadcast on ESPN 2 and the Star+ platform.

If at least something said by the champion in recent months is true, his wife Paris shouldn’t be very happy. Why Fury, after knocking out Jamaican Dillian Whyte in six episodes on April 23 at Wembley against 94,000 spectatorshe had announced that this was his last professional fight and claimed that with this decision he was fulfilling a promise he had made to his partner. “I have 150 million in the bank, I look good, healthy and young”then he had boasted.

But as in the story of Pedro and the wolf, nobody believed that announcement at face value. Immediately the gypsy king he threatened to do an exhibition with Cameroonian Francis NgannouUltimate Fighting Championship (UFC) mixed martial arts heavyweight champion, and a fight against Icelandic actor Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson, who played The Mountain in the series game of Thrones. And on August 10th he announced that he would face Chisora ​​because that would allow him to “to be the first heavyweight champion in history to have two trilogies”which was plainly wrong, as they did in their day Muhammad Ali (against Joe Frazier and Ken Norton) e Evander Holyfield (against Riddick Bowe and John Ruiz).

However, two days later he hit another swerve. “After long discussions, I have finally decided to stop and on my 34th birthday I say: ‘Bon voyage’,” he wrote on his Twitter and Instagram accounts (a field in which he is very comfortable) along with a photo in which he was seen hugging Superintendent of SugarHill, his last coach. In other words, he announced his departure from boxing 48 hours after confirming a fight and four months after announcing his retirement. Like that slogan of The rebel newsanother contributor to the general confusion.

But the marches and counter marches didn’t end there. On September 5, the Briton challenged his compatriot via Instagram Anthony Joshua, who had been defeated for the second time by Oleksandr Usyk a few days earlier. The proposal was not limited to the field of social networks: Queensberry Promotions, the company that manages Fury’s career, and Matchroom Boxing, the company that manages Joshua’s interests, have entered into negotiations to agree on a confrontation that would take place in December, but have not reached an agreement.

Then the name of Chisora ​​resurfaced, a veteran who will turn 39 on December 29, who has a record of 33 wins (23 by KO) and 12 losses, which has been broken by, among others, former world champions Vitali Klitschko, David Haye and Joseph Parker and by the current monarch Oleksandr Usyk, and whose brightest years are long gone. It becomes clear that if anyone is a fan of very high risk betting and good profitability, you should allocate a few tickets to the London fighter but born in Mbare, on the outskirts of Harare, the capital of Zimbabwe.

In those brighter years, Chisora ​​faced Fury twice. On 23 July 2011, in a duel that both went unbeaten in 14 appearances, the gypsy kingwho was not yet a boxer recognized outside the borders of the United Kingdom, he won comfortably on points at Wembley Arena and took the British and Commonwealth titles from Zimbabwe, who would have his first unsuccessful World Cup chance seven months later (he would fall on the cards to Vitali Klitschko).

On 29 November 2014, with the UK and European titles in contention at the Excel Arena in London, Fury beat Chisora ​​by TKO in the 11th round. A year later, Manchester’s merit would beat Wladimir Klitschko in Düsseldorf, capture the belts of the World Boxing Association, the World Boxing Organization and the International Boxing Federation and become a planetary figure. That triumph was followed by the first retirement of the champion (imprisoned by problematic tuberculosis and suicidal tendencies), which lasted two and a half years.

Although it is difficult to predict the future of a man who has made these comings and goings a constitutive part of his careerthere probably won’t be many other features in the career of the 32-year-old boxer who recorded 32 wins (23 before the limit) and only one draw against Deontay Wilder in 2018 in the first chapter of the trilogy between the two. Because the physique is already starting to make itself felt.

“I’m pretty ruined by injuries, my body is exhausted. My elbows are messed up, my arms, my shoulders, my back, everything… I can’t do what I used to do.”, he acknowledged this week in an interview with ESPN. “But I decided to go back because I was bored and I can still knock some motherfucker out and get paid to do it. I hope that later, somewhere, I get an arm transplant or something like that,” she added, with a particularly futuristic view of medical sciences.

It is speculated that among those men he can still knock out is Chisora ​​(who weighed 118.2 kilos at Friday’s weigh-in), something he will be looking to certify this Saturday. apart from this, Fury’s main goal (he weighed 121.8 kilos) is to create a comparison in the first months of 2023 with Oleksandr Usykchampion of the WBA, WBO and IBF, to anoint an undisputed heavyweight champion, something no fighter has achieved since the WBO (the youngest of the four governing bodies) began sanctioning world title fights in 1988.

Another trilogy in the USA

Without much media attention but with a firm promise as a fighter, the Mexican Juan Francisco Estrada and the Nicaraguan Román little chocolate gonzález They will also be the protagonists this Saturday of the third chapter of a trilogy that began ten years ago: they will meet again at the Gila River Arena in Glendale (Arizona) for the WBC super flyweight title which became vacant after the Texan Jesse Rodríguez resigned because he will go down to the fly division . The duel will start around midnight and will be visible through the DAZN platform.

After a couple of prompted postponements from both contestants contracting the coronavirus, Estrada and González will try to unbalance the balance of this rivalry. The Central American, then the WBA light flyweight champion, won easily on points in Los Angeles in November 2012. And in March 2021 in Dallas, the Rooster He emerged victorious via a hotly contested split decision in a thrilling match to unify the WBA and WBC super flyweight titles, in which they traded 2,529 punches.

Sonoran Estrada, born 32 years ago in Puerto Peñasco, holds a record of 43 wins (28 before the limit) and 3 losses, and was also the WBA and WBO flyweight champion between 2013 and 2016. At 35, González (has 51-3 ), will look to rekindle its laurels. Monarch in four categories (minimum to super flyweight), the Managua-born boxer was almost unanimously considered the best pound for pound on the planet after Floyd Mayweather’s retirement in 2015 and went undefeated for 12 years and 46 professional fights from his debut until he was knocked out by Thailand’s Srisaket Sor Rungvisai in 2017.

Particularly attentive to what happens in Glendale will be the only world champion Argentina has these days, the Puma Fernando Martínez, owner of the IBF belt in this category, who is looking for a carat opponent for his next presentation. The other holders of the 115-pound title are Japanese Kazuto Ioka (WBO) and American Joshua Franco (WBA), who will meet on December 31 in Tokyo.