sport reporter
LONDON — Zimbabwe-born British heavyweight boxer Derek Chisora battered his way back to the fringe of world heavyweight title contention with a relentless brutalising of Davd Price.
The salvo lasted for three rounds and two minutes, long enough to sink Price to his unfulfilled career knees. Albeit not the single massive blow which he has been undergoing at key moments earlier in his career.
Price had weathered a series of massive right hands from the start and it took a double whammy to put him down in the fourth, an uppercut and a hook.
Still he was able to drag that huge frame upright but referee Howard Foster was alarmed. Even as he asked Price if he was alright to continue —and doubting the nodding response — Price’s cornermen threw in the towel.
The end of the road, perhaps, for Price but a corner turned for Chisora.
His manager and former heavyweight champion David Haye said: “There is a now good chance of Dereck getting a world title shot next year as one of two of the belts fall vacant.”
Chisora made his entrance as usual with his face concealed by a red, white and blue Union flag under a white hood to match his embossed robe.
Price, of course, was in red.
Chisora, befitting his new pseudonym, went on the attack from the start, clearly winning the first even though he charged into three or four meaty punches from Price late in the round.
Chisora was warned twice for low blows, one so low it might have performed a cartilage operation on Price’s knee.
No doubt to the surprise of Chisora and most of the audience, Price absorbed a succession of huge rights in the third, any one of which might have put him down and perhaps out in the past.
More of the same in the fourth proved too much, too heavy, too redolent of serious harm.
Price finally went down from a pair of rights — uppercut and hook. Gamely he rose to his fight and referee Foster was debating whether to call a halt when the white towel came fluttering across the ring. — Daily Mail
