![]() ![]() Some of them are still good buddies but they were bad boys. "When I came here, apart from my mum, I knew no one. But, at the same time, I'm a Londoner now."Ĭhisora's accent carries more echoes of Finchley than Harare but he nearly lost himself in the big bad city. I've not been back but I've still got the African background in me. ![]() "That was 10 years ago and of course I still miss it. ![]() "I left Zimbabwe when I was 16," Chisora says. But his intriguing life story will help Warren, his ingenious promoter, drum up bigger and better fights should Chisora beat Sexton again to confirm his place behind Haye among British heavyweights. I ain't scared."Ĭhisora is still a comparative novice and so a fight against either Klitschko is a long way from happening. Haye is a good guy but he's in the wrong sport. He hasn't got a chance against them and he knows that. David doesn't want to fight the Klitschkos. What does Chisora think of Haye, the WBA world champion? "Let's not kid each other. You got to come round for dinner.' That's why boxing, at its best, is a gentleman's sport." We knock each other about and then afterwards we hug and say: 'Beautiful fight, man. "I've got nuff love for Sam," he says gruffly. But, here, he sounds almost uplifting in describing his affection for a man he still hopes to knock out. Chisora can also be thoughtless and crude, and last year he was suspended for four months after he bit an opponent, Paul Butlin, while outpointing him. Setting aside Harrison's limited credentials as a world-title challenger, Haye took boxing down another plunging low when he said the fight would be "more one-sided than a gang rape". There is a striking contrast between this heavyweight clash and the high-profile yet dubious brawl David Haye and Audley Harrison are peddling. That's why it's such an interesting fight." He wants to get me back and I want to show the British public it was no fluke. Sam has the most beautiful jab in the heavyweight division but they've tried to bulk him up to take my power. He's got to get over that memory and I think they've gone for muscle over boxing ability. "That's why Sam has got a big psychological hurdle to face now. His head was rocking back – bam-bam-bam – and the ref made a good stoppage. He stumbled and I went in and jabbed him before I started landing hooks when he was on the ropes. "I hit him with an overhand right, bam, that caught him on the side of his head. On his small wooden chair Chisora replays that dramatic stoppage by throwing punches in the air. I didn't want the judges to decide the outcome, so I thought: 'I've got to stop him.' I dug deep." "It was the toughest fight of my career but, in the fifth, I'd blasted him and he was saved by the bell. A bruising encounter, only Chisora's fourth pro fight, looked set to go the distance until Del Boy went to work with brutal effectiveness. I'm totally sorted when I walk to the ring."Ĭhisora believes Sexton has more to fear, as he was stopped in the last minute of their first bout, in June 2008. ![]() But the closer you get to the fight the more chilled I become. The other day, at the press conference with Sexton, it was like I was in shock. The only problem with me is that when they announce the fight I'm nervous – like a wreck. "If you're not twitchy in this game, then there's something wrong with you. It offers a curious intimacy as, with his sweat still glistening, Chisora speaks first of his anxieties before such a hard and evenly matched fight. He has set up two tiny stools in the middle of an empty ring, so we are just inches apart. "I'm actually a very nice guy," Chisora says in a gym tucked away down a side-street in Finchley. Chisora, after all, is an intriguing enigma in the already deeply strange world of heavyweight boxing. His quirky passion chimes with his "Del Boy" nickname and the Only Fools and Horses theme tune that accompanies his walk to the ring. The huge crowd that is expected for British boxing's biggest night this year, as Frank Warren unfurls his Magnificent Seven card in Birmingham and on Sky Box Office, will be just as bewildered as those non-fight fans in Hampstead to hear that Chisora also deals in antiques. ![]()
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