adminLONDON. – Derek Chisora had around two million reasons to take a fight with Tyson.
In the nine and a half rounds before the referee finally ended this farce, he may have wondered if it was the daftest transaction of a long career.
He will be substantially richer, of course.
He will have also garnered respect for that most questionable of talents for absorbing a beating.
But this was nonsense.
It was dangerous nonsense on paper and it was far more dangerous nonsense in the ring.
The only blessing is Fury knew the scale of the mismatch and seemingly had the decency to leave gears three, four, five and six untouched.
Had he been more spitefully inclined, reviews of this engagement for the WBC heavyweight title would be taking a more severe and concerned tone. Instead, it was simply an affront to competitive senses; a clash between a great fighter and a limited contender of 38 whose main attribute has often taken on the appearance of his worst enemy – his courage.
Combined, those ingredients meant a bout that somehow extended to the final nine seconds of the 10th round, even if it was as good as over from the first exchanges of the first session, when we had visual confirmation of the obvious.
That is to say, Chisora would be ballsy.
He would be brave.
He would swing in Fury’s direction and he would miss. In return, an old swinger with 12 previous defeats, three of which had come in his most recent four bouts, would take as much as Fury could be bothered to give and he kept signing for further deliveries.
Good on Chisora for fancying the work, good on any brave man in a hard sport, but it was about as close a match as one between Fury and a heavy bag.
Heavy bags were never designed for world title shots.
Again, the relief is Chisora did not get seriously hurt for his £2m payday. In fact, the only time he went down was when he and Fury collapsed in a heap together during the third. But it was a case of domination, a slaying of 1,000 unanswered cuts rather than anything involving an axe.
When Fury wanted to land, he landed. When he wanted to ease off on a man he sincerely likes, and whom he had beaten twice before, he eased off, most notably in the fourth when he seemed keen to give Chisora a breather.
Either side of that interlude, or that act of mercy if you prefer, there were moments when Fury brutally pummelled the Londoner with his combinations and upper cuts, but somehow not enough to convince Chisora’s corner to chuck in their towel.
The sight of their guy spitting out long trails of blood in the seventh should have been evidence that this had gone far enough.
Ditto the right eye that was cut and bruised shut in the eighth.
Same questions go for the referee Victor Loughlin, who eventually stepped in near the end of the 10th when Fury was working a combination. What took them all so bloody long?
Only Chisora’s long-term health will determine if that prolonged period of punishment was preferable to more sudden methods of defeat. – Mailonline.
Online Reporter