Deontay Wilder vs Oleksandr Usyk is off (for now).
That doesn’t mean to say it won’t happen later in the year though. Never say never one that.
Instead Wilder has moved on to fight Derek Chisora next up in the UK in early April.
Speaking to Fight Hub Wilder clarified the whole thing properly:
“With the Usyk fight, there were a lot of rumors, and what the rumors said was true. Me and Derek have been working on this fight for a very long time. Actually, this fight was supposed to have happened back in December, you know what I mean? But due to other situations and stuff, it didn’t happen. And here we are now, with the Usyk situation. I’m 40 years old as a fighter. I’m ready to go. I can’t sit back. I can’t sit around. Of course, we had plans of what we wanted to do to get to the top. We got through our first fight. The second fight is going to be at a level a little bit different than my opponent, but a little bit more. And then Derek came in, which leveled it all out because we need somebody like that, you know what I mean? But during that time, the Usyk situation—the call came. He mentioned it first; he wanted to fight me. Then the buzz started happening, the phone calls started happening, and we started talking about it. But I don’t think they had a real set date or place where they wanted to go—it was still lingering around. The clock is tick-tocking, and if you understand boxing, you know things either go slow or come by real fast. There’s no medium, and you’ve got to be ready at all times. When this fight was made—because we still kept negotiations going on with Derek too—you had to have all your options open. You just can’t sit around, especially like I said: I’m an older fighter. I’m not a young fighter. I’ve got to keep going. So by the time we got the Derek fight made, that’s when the other side was like, ‘Oh, we’re ready to go.’ But it felt like it was just too late, and we wanted to take this opportunity first before taking the other one. You know what I mean?”
That clears that up then. Quite comprehensive from Wilder on what happened.
It appears he just wanted to get back in the ring as soon as possible — you can’t blame him on that.
Chisora is a big name in the UK and is a good style of boxing for Wilder. He comes straight ahead for Wilder.
Wilder will have a reach advantage as well. And he’s more of a counter puncher so Chisora should suit him in that regard as well.
Chisora has never been known for defense either.
If he walks onto one of those Wilder right hands or left hands early he might be in for a surprise.
