At 42, with the miles on the clock and the scars to prove it, Derek Chisora is still doing things his own way.
On a grey London afternoon inside camp, there is music thumping somewhere in the background, laughter echoing down the corridor, and Chisora – shirt damp with sweat, eyes alive – holding court like only he can ahead of his showdown with Deontay Wilder at the O2 this weekend.
The chaos, the charisma, the theatre, it’s all still there. But sit with him long enough and something else emerges too: reflection, honesty, and a man acutely aware that the final chapter is approaching.
It is impossible to understand Chisora without understanding the battle he has fought outside the ring, particularly with alcohol. He doesn’t dress it up. He doesn’t dodge it.
‘My mum told me I would ruin my legacy if I kept drinking. I used to drink a lot, but I stopped,’ he says, leaning forward, voice dropping slightly. ‘I would still drink now and then, but when I would go into camp I would stop drinking enough to be able to get through it.
‘I was drinking before each camp though and what you have to understand – when you’ve been drinking for three or four months and then you stop for two months while training, those first two months are about getting the alcohol out of your system. So I had to stop. I could notice the impact it was having on me.’
Derek Chisora has revealed all on his alcohol battle during his career and now fighting at 42
Chisora fights rival Deontay Wilder on Saturday with his nephew Jermaine Dhliwayo (right), 24, fighting on the undercard
It wasn’t one single moment that changed everything, at least not straight away. But Monaco happened. That European title fight against Agit Kabayel.
It’s still a defeat that clearly frustrates him, but in his own words, it’s also the one that saved him.
‘I lost that fight in Monaco and that was a blessing from above, from Jesus Christ. That fight was eight years ago but it changed everything. I lost that fight, even though I feel like I should have won it. I came back and said to myself, something has to give. Before that, I’d even had a fight with someone in a nightclub, and I thought, no – something has to change.
‘That was it. I was born again. I sold all my alcohol – I used to collect wine – so I sold all my wines, my spirits, everything. I stopped drinking. I was born again, and that was it. From then on, you have to understand, everything is a process. When God shows you something, you have to follow it through.’
He pauses, nodding to himself, as if replaying the moment. For a fighter who has built a career on chaos, it’s striking how much of his turning point is rooted in stillness – in faith, in clarity.
Yet even then, something wasn’t quite complete. The next step, he insists, came to him almost like a vision.
‘I was born again then, but something was still missing. Something wasn’t complete. For some reason, I kept feeling like I needed a good manager. I kept praying, and I had a vision of David Haye. I went to see him in a hotel.
‘I told him straight: we hadn’t seen each other since the fight, but every time we did, there was that energy between us, like we wanted to fight. I called him, we sat down in the hotel, and I asked him about management. He looked at me in shock – I’m telling you, real shock. Then he said, ‘I’ll let you know.’ And that was it.’
Chisora rolled into a central London press conference in a tank alongside Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK
Chisora and Wilder (right) were on the ‘Piers Morgan Uncensored’ show earlier this week
And that’s what makes it all the more remarkable. This is David Haye. The same David Haye he once clashed with so violently at a press conference that it cost him his licence, the same rivalry that was built on genuine animosity. For it to come full circle like that, from chaos to trust, almost sums up his journey better than anything else.
‘You have to understand – God shows you the way all the time. The question is whether you choose to follow it. It’s like that film The Matrix, you know? Which pill do you take? Do you take the pill of going out tonight with your friends and having the best night of your life, or the pill of staying home so you can train properly tomorrow and progress in your career? Most people choose one pill and that’s the going out pill. I couldn’t keep taking the pill anymore or I would have never amounted to anything.’
That sense of choice – chaos or control – has defined everything about Chisora’s career, including the way he sold himself in a brutally competitive boxing landscape. Long before social media did the heavy lifting, he understood the value of spectacle.
‘It was actually Dean Powell and one of the Daily Mail journalists that suggested it,’ he says of the now-iconic Union Jack bandana. ‘We were all sat in a restaurant together and we came up with the idea of me wearing the Union Jack. Because, if I’m being honest, I would’ve been hard to sell. Before that, I was difficult to sell in boxing.
‘Remember, there was Eddie Hearn, Barry Hearn, Frank Warren, Kellie Maloney, and Mick Hennessy – all these different promoters with their stars and big names and that’s all they cared about. There were so many fights happening every week, and you had to sell tickets to make money.
‘Sky Sports was putting on five shows every month, so it was tough to get a look in. Because of that, we had to come up with a gimmick. That’s what I’m trying to say to you – gimmicks work. You have to come up with something and wearing the Union Jack and acting the way I did was my gimmick.’
It became more than a gimmick. It became his identity, wrapped in the flag, loud, unpredictable, impossible to ignore. The ‘bad boy’ of British boxing.
This was the version of him that flipped tables at press conferences, brawled with opponents before the first bell had even rung, got himself banned and fined, and seemed to thrive on the chaos as much as the fighting itself. You never quite knew what he was going to do next and that was the point.
Chisora started to wear a Union Jack bandana to make himself more sellable
And he wouldn’t change a second of it.
‘Would I change what I’ve done throughout my career, the bad boy stuff? No, I wouldn’t change it. I’m still a bad boy, but now I’m a grown-up bad boy, a bad man. I’m not a bad boy anymore; I’m a bad man now. So I’ve changed, you know, from a bad boy to a bad man.
‘But it’s important to say that everything I’ve done in my career over the last 10–15 years has never been staged. I don’t have any regrets at all. Yeah, I spat in someone’s face. Yeah, I fought David Haye. Do I regret it? No. Did I apologise? Yes, I did apologise. You know, it is what it is, we move on.’
For a long time, plenty didn’t like him… even those closest to him. That, too, has shifted.
‘I was hated, then I was loved. You can’t beat that. At the beginning of my career, everybody hated me, even my friends. They were saying, “That’s not boxing.” I was just doing what I needed to do to make money. Then suddenly they liked it. Became fans. It’s been a real journey and I am happy with how it has played out.’
There’s a grin as he says it – part pride, part disbelief. Because the man who once thrived on confrontation now spends his downtime in a very different kind of arena altogether.
‘I’m a father of girls now, girls soften you up,’ he says, laughing. ‘Instead of going out to buy boxing gloves, you’re buying teacups. “Hey, Daddy, do you want to have tea?” So you go and get the tea. Now you’re sitting there drinking pretend tea, and you have to play along. “Oh wow, this is nice, careful, it’s too hot.” It’s not easy, you have to really get into that game. It’s just what it is. It makes you softer, that’s for sure.’
It’s a striking image – the same man who once flipped tables at press conferences now carefully pretending tea is too hot. But step back into camp, and reality quickly reasserts itself. The body, he admits, doesn’t lie anymore.
Chisora and former Premier League striker Darren Bent travel home together on London tube
‘Shut the f*** up man. Older, what you talking about older? Get the f*** out of here. I am a f***ing stallion what are you talking about,’ he jokes, before breaking into laughter.
‘Only joking, my body is f***ing killing me. F*** man, my body is f***ing killing me. Let me tell you something: being in your 40s is no joke. You can’t just get up and go anymore, I’m feeling it, and I’m not surprised.
‘Even with running, you have to start by walking, then walking fast, and only then start jogging. You can’t just jump straight into it. You’ve got to get up, sit on the side of the bed for about 20 minutes, wait, then stand up and sometimes sit back down again. I’m getting old… but come next week, I’ll fight like I’m 21 years old.’
That defiance – part bravado, part necessity – underpins everything about this final run. Because Chisora knows what’s coming, even if he doesn’t quite know how to face it.
‘I see a therapist about retirement. And when I talk about it, it’s scary. Retirement is very scary,’ he admits, the mood shifting again. ‘You have to understand, from amateurs your life is already mapped out.
‘You go to school, come back, get your bag, go to the gym, come back, do your homework, go to bed. Then you turn pro and it’s the same thing, just on a bigger scale. People tell you what to eat, what to do, what to be. That’s your whole life.
‘And then one day you get a knock. “It’s retirement. You need to retire tomorrow.” And that’s it. The door shuts. You don’t know anything else.
The chaos, the charisma, the theatre, it’s all still there. But also reflection, honesty, and a man acutely aware that the final chapter is approaching
‘Yes, you’ve got money, but money doesn’t make you happy. What made you happy was the suffering – the running, the sparring, being in the boxing gym. That’s where your purpose was.
‘That’s the scary part. Very, very scary and not just for me, for everybody. That’s why a lot of athletes, when they retire, they don’t have anything else. So what do they do? They pick up a bottle and start drinking. They’re trying to run away from something they can’t run away from.
‘I cried walking to the ring during my last fight in Manchester. I was crying. It’s very emotional. It’s scary. You don’t know if that’s the last time.’
Outside the ropes, Chisora remains as headline-grabbing as ever. Just this week, he rolled into a central London press conference in a tank – yes, a tank – alongside Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform UK.
The friendship between the pair has grown in recent years, rooted in shared views on Brexit and ‘British identity’, with Chisora unapologetic in his support and equally comfortable using the Union Jack as both symbol and sales tool. It is, in many ways, the ultimate extension of the gimmick he once needed – now transformed into something more personal, more political, and unmistakably his.
And so, as fight night looms, the contradictions remain: the bad man who plays tea parties, the showman who found religion, the veteran who still insists he’s a stallion.
One last fight. One last walk. One last roar.
