DERECK CHISORA is a changed man. “I have been born again and stopped drinking, it had to be done block-by-block. I stopped drinking alcohol on New Years Eve so I am almost a year sober,” he says. “I was not an alcoholic, I just loved a drink. Seven bottles of red wine with my buddies isn’t an alcoholic is it? God made wine!”
But the most striking development in his camp for the December 22 fight with Dillian Whyte is bringing in former rival David Haye as his manager. Haye will also be co-promoting the event with Matchroom too.
Whyte is unimpressed at Chisora’s link up with Haye. “If Don Charles has had 20 years and couldn’t change anything, what is David going to do?” Dillian mused. “Because David Haye glassed him maybe and broke Don Charles’ jaw and bashed him up in the ring maybe he thinks, ‘This guy bashed me up in and out of the ring and so he knows more than Don Charles.’”
He also predicts Chisora and new manager David Haye will fall out before the December 22 fight. “I think the wheels will definitely fall off because Dereck is a mad man, you have to know how to deal with Dereck and David is a narcissist and an egotistical maniac and it’s hard to work with someone like that. Dereck is very proud and stubborn and forceful also. They’re similar in many ways and David is probably going to think I don’t need this, I got you the fight and I got my 25 per cent. If he sticks it out then it’s a real achievement; it’s more of an achievement for David than for Dereck,” Whyte said.
Not that he expects a vastly different Chisora to the fighter he met before. Whyte said, “I don’t believe Dereck can change that much in 10 or 12 weeks because when the fight gets tough he will revert back to what he knows. Against Takam he was getting bashed up and stood against the ropes, I don’t know what Takam was doing fighting like that as an experienced man. He got dropped then stood in the same place.”
