Chisora opens up on brawls, cigars and showdown with Fury

LONDON — Is Tyson Fury’s challenger for the world heavyweight boxing title Dereck or Derek Chisora? Does this devout follower of Jesus prefer his name with or without a C? And why has it kept changing?

These may not be the most vital questions prior to tonight’s fight at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium. Not when the two most important letters in the lexicon of the prize-ring are KO, which each combatant is promising to inflict on the other. But the answers shed light on how radically life has altered for this man in the 15 years and 45 fights of a rumbustious career.

‘’I was christened Dereck and that was me as a boy,’’ he tells Sportsmail. ‘’But after I started getting in trouble with the law I dropped the C in case I had to go to court. That let me say they had the wrong name on the charge sheet, which got me off everything.’’

There were lurid reports of brawls, stabbings and shootings, some true, some but not all left in his past: ‘’That’s not the case any more. It’s time to bring back Dereck. I prefer it that way now, if you don’t mind.’’ The C has reappeared on Team Chisora’s tracksuit tops, a symbol of a life which has become as much wrapped up in love, family and tranquility as it still is about boxing.

Another C-word speaks to the transformation in his personal life — cigar. Chisora ponders how he came from birth in Zimbabwe to fighting for England, the WBC world title and £2million this weekend by lighting up. Cuba’s finest, of course.

‘’A Montecristo for the big occasion and the long reflecting,’’ he says.So how many, how often? ‘’Ten a day,’’ he says. ‘’My wife goes mad. When she can’t find me in the house she phones me asking where am I. Outside in the garden. With my cigar, pacing up and down the lawn. If not that, she might find me going to see my friends in my Smart car.’’

This giant may not look like a typical family man, but he smiles broadly as he talks about personally redecorating his girls’ bedrooms. Chisora grins, too, when reviewing the scale of his task — at 38 against a champion even more dauntingly huge than himself.

‘’ Tyson is extremely agile for 6ft 9in,’’ he says. ‘’Of course he’s dangerous, we both are. But right now, as well as him, I’m the best boxer I’ve ever been. We’ve both discovered the older you get the more you understand boxing.

The only aspect of this occasion which does not amuse him is criticism of Fury choosing a friend he has beaten twice as his warm-up for a spring fight against Oleksandr Usyk for the undisputed heavyweight title. — Mailonline