I thought we were supposed to be asking the questions. Those of us more accustomed to rattling laptop keyboards than heavyweight skulls sit opposite Derek Chisora, arranged in a crescent, ready to interview the star of the moment – but it’s the British veteran who has a question for us. For me, awkwardly.
“How old are you?” he says with an accusatory point and a suspicious squint. “Twenty-nine! He’s OK,” Chisora tells those gathered in the room. What does he mean “OK”? “He can go out and drink sambucas, and every shot you could ever take down the road, come out the pub lagging, go to sleep with fish and chips down his gut, wake up, and he’s fine.” I’m not sure I want to, to be honest, but I’m hesitant to tell “Delboy”.
“Now you take f***ing sambuca,” he jibes at various faces dotted around the room, “you’re dying for three or four days!” He includes himself in that group, mind: “When you’re in your forties man, it’s just... you sit down, eat a nice meal, order a glass of red wine, and you sleep. In your twenties, you don’t even eat, you’re like shoving it down there when you get to the pub.” Chisora proceeds to imitate a pig eating from a trough, I suppose, before making some unpublishable comments about the relative sexual stamina of those in their twenties and forties.
“At this age now, with my opponent, we can’t be violent.” It’s a curious choice of words from Chisora, who is expected to give as much of his body and soul as usual when he fights Deontay Wilder on Saturday.
For two aged gunslingers in boxing’s heavyweight division, this is surely pistols at one final, flickering dawn. Chisora, now 42, has sworn he will retire – win or lose. Wilder, 40, is reluctant to make such a declaration but probably should. In truth, the American has been gun-shy in recent times, after a decade of delivering the most devastating firepower that the division has seen.
Wilder was a world champion for years, while Chisora is a nearly-man, but the definition of a people’s champion. As such, hardcore and casual boxing fans alike will fill London’s O2 Arena on Saturday, as Chisora returns to familiar surroundings while Wilder boxes on these shores for the first time in 13 years.
There will be no mercy from either, yet outside of the ring, the pair are more than cordial. “The ‘Bronze Bomber’, we hang out together, just chilling,” Chisora tells us. When he says, “We can’t be violent”, he means verbally, hinting at fans’ perceptions of the behaviour of “two grown-ass men”. “I want to be loving and hang out. I took him to Borough Market, him and his beautiful missus, and I bought them fish and chips.” Indeed, the smell wafted through the building when Wilder arrived.
You might have noticed that Chisora is, in his own way, philosophical. He even weighs in on our existence as journalists: “Sooner or later, it won’t be you guys sitting there; it’ll be a f***ing computer with AI on it.” Travel? “Sooner or later, there will be f***ing flying cars.” But what about boxing, a domain he has traversed and prowled in a way that few have, familiarising himself with every dank corner and grimy crevice? “I love this game so much, it’s beautiful,” he says in all sincerity.
At first, it seems to be a sentiment in stark contrast to that shared by Wilder just minutes earlier. But after Wilder lengthily lamented what he perceived as corruption in the sport, it turns out Chisora agrees with the American on that aspect – the Briton just receives it differently.
“We are all f***ing scumbags,” he says with a soft smile and an aura of peace. “It’s a scumbag sport, but guess what?”
Silence, then a prompt from Chisora: “This is where you say, ‘What?’”
What, Derek?
“We like to deal with each other as scumbags. My point is to try to do one over on you, then you realise, and you do one over on me. The whole conniving of the sport [is what makes it beautiful].”
At this point, he is being asked out of the room. His first press conference for the Wilder fight is just minutes away. As he prepares to deliver his final comment, he has already hoisted his trademark union jack balaclava up to his face, ready to tie it. “We’re all scumbags,” he signs off, muting himself for now – but not for long.
