Dereck Chisora put up a good fight today in Munich, Germany, losing via unanimous decision to WBC heavyweight titleholder Vitali Klitschko, and now his promoter Frank Warren is calling for either a rematch, or a fight between Chisora and the other Klitschko brother, world heavyweight champion Wladimir, reports Chris Mannix of Sports Illustrated and Epix (and NBC Sports).
Chisora (15-3, 9 KO) has lost two straight fights and three of his last four, but he's in an odd position with that. His loss to Tyson Fury is generally accepted as a result mostly of Chisora's terrible physical conditioning for the fight, and his loss in December to Robert Helenius is generally accepted as biased judging in Finland.
He clearly did lose today to Klitschko, but he put up a better fight than anyone has against Vitali since Lennox Lewis back in 2003. Does he deserve another crack at the 40-year-old Vitali, or a shot at Wladimir?
Obviously, Warren wants to get his man the biggest fights he can. I mentioned it briefly when discussing the video of Chisora spitting in Wladimir's face prior to the fight, but guys like Chisora burn out, they don't fade away. Chisora is tough, but he's got some screws loose and without great talent, could be out of the spotlight almost as quickly as he came into it.
Vitali (44-2, 40 KO) may not see any point in fighting Chisora again, but little brother Wladimir (56-3, 49 KO) just might. The brothers tend to take insults very seriously, and Chisora spitting in Wladimir's face didn't get a major reaction from Wladimir, but it meant something for sure.
Right now, Wladimir is scheduled to face Jean Marc Mormeck on March 3, in what stacks up as a pretty grotesque mismatch. It's not like Wladimir is beating off interesting contenders with a stick at this point. There's a lot of talk of him having to rematch Tony Thompson, a fight that wasn't all that interesting the first time around in 2008, when Thompson wasn't 40 years old.
Would we be turning down a better fight than Dereck Chisora would bring to the table? Probably not.
Wladimir and Chisora have actually had two scheduled dates against one another, the first in December 2010, which fell through when Wladimir was injured in training, and then a make-up date in April 2011, which was canceled so that Wladimir could instead fight David Haye.