After making a surprise appearance under Nicklas Bendtner’s shorts during Euro 2012, Paddy Power’s famous lucky underpants had another unexpected showing at Dereck Chisora’s weigh-in today.
The lucky green underpants showed up at Upton Park this afternoon where they were worn by heavyweight boxer Dereck “Del Boy” Chisora at the weigh-in for his eagerly anticipated grudge match against David Haye on Saturday night.
The tense atmosphere at today’s weigh-in was temporarily lightened when the 242lb Zimbabwean muscleman proudly displayed his green Paddy Power lucky underpants while on the scales.
Before today Paddy’s lucky underpants were last seen at Euro 2012 when Danish striker Nicklas Bendtner chose to display them as part of his goal celebration against Portugal. Take a look below:
UEFA decided to come down extremely hard on the Danish striker afterwards, fining him a massive €100,000 and issuing him with a one game competitive ban. Thankfully, the Irish bookmakers paid the fine for the Arsenal forward instead.
A spokesperson for Paddy Power said today of Chisora’s chosen attire: “The lucky pants were a knock-out success for Nicklas in the Euro’s so we’re hopeful they’ll do the same for Dereck on Saturday.”
As for the fight itself, we’re now less than two weeks away from a fight which is heavy on controversy but light on significance. The build-up could well be the most entertaining aspect of David Haye’s clash with Dereck Chisora at Upton Park.
David Haye, the former undisputed cruiserweight champion, has spent the last four years talking himself in to big money fights. Claiming to be the next big thing in the heavyweight division. Promising to shake-up the division and to take down the dominating Klitschkos. He managed neither.
What he did do was to make a lot of money for himself, sacrificing the excellent reputation he had earned in becoming the world’s top cruiserweight by turning himself in to a novelty attraction in the heavyweight division.
In the four years since his final cruiserweight fight, a multi-belt winning KO of Enzo Macarinelli, Haye has beaten two over-the-hill pros (John Ruiz and Monte Barrett), he danced his way to victory over a lumbering giant (Nikolai Valuev) and he stopped Audley ‘A-Farce’ Harrison.
This was enough to get him a shot against the lesser of the Klitschkos, Wladimir, in July of last year. He proceeded to do his best to avoid fighting for 12 rounds and then proceeded to moan about a sore toe being the cause of his poor performance. From that point on his legitimacy as a top heavyweight has taken a bashing and now he’s trying to cash in on the last drop of credibility he has left.
“I would give David some advice – don’t say anything right now, like you have a broken toe and couldn’t compete. You’d be called a sore loser. It wouldn’t look good,” said Wladimir Klitschko after beating David Haye and his broken toe.
Fighting a domestic rival with just 18 professional fights to his name and who has lost three of his last four fights may not pay as well as getting in to the ring with Vitali Klitschko but it’ll hurt a whole lot less. And Haye actually has a chance of winning this one, a 3/10 chance with Paddy Power.
Chisora did look better in his loss to Vitali than Haye did against Wladimir so it’s not without risk for the Haye-Maker. Chisora is 12/5 to win.
Chisora is a smaller heavyweight than the Klitschkos or Valuev so we might get to see some of the boxing talent which served Haye so well at cruiserweight. The former champion has good hand-speed an excellent knock-out record so backing this fight not to go the distance at 11/10 is a solid bet.
Only three of Hayes 27 fights have gone the distance and at 6/4 to win by KO with Paddy Power, he’s well worth backing to stop Chisora within the distance. Who knows, we may yet be entertained.
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