HOTEL CHISORA

As national treasures go there can be few more loveable and crazy than Derek 'Del Boy' Chisora (40) who last night defeated Joe Joyce (38) in a heavyweight slug fest that resembled a scene from a Ray Harryhausen monster movie, almost as if the two fighters involved had been animated in claymation.

With professional commentators and armchair pundits all saying that careers were on the line for both Derek and Joe, it became clear once again (as it always does) that Chisora didn't get the memo - his raison d'être for fighting is born out of an activistic bond with combat deep in his blood as if he has been continually reborn as a warrior throughout many incarnations past. Perhaps he had fought alongside the ancestral Zimbabwean Kings in between the 11th - 19th centuries only to now find himself in 21st Century England fighting as a dual Commonwealth representative of both Britain and Zimbabwe. You certainly get the sense that Chisora doesn't need the belts or critics fawning over him to spur on his desire to fight. It's just what he does, as natural to him as breathing or munching on a 'Five Guys' burger which he routinely enjoys after every battle, win, lose or draw.

If spirit was the single criterion by which greatness is measured in boxing then Chisora could certainly lay claim to being top of the sport, and although he may not share the technical finesse of some of his peers he is no doubt a legend in the game. One only needed to see the child-like admiration in the eyes of undisputed heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk (former opponent of Chisora) watching ringside last night and the happiness that lit up his face when Derek's victory was confirmed on the scorecards.

Though it may not have been the prettiest fight, it was certainly the grittiest and for sure dogged determination it was utterly compelling. Times when it seemed like Derek was 'out on his feet', the fact was he remained as deadly as a wounded predator, striking out with his fully gloved hammer blows when Joyce went in for the kill, to his great cost in round nine where the younger man by two years finally got dropped to the canvas in a flash knockdown.

As his tenth and final fight at the 02 Arena, in which Chisora has fought many memorable battles over the past decade, it was a great send off and now as I think back on how London's adopted son from Mbare, Harare, has always famously ring walked out to the Eagles 'Hotel California' it seems appropriate to recall the famous line "You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave".

Derek 'Hotel' Chisora can never leave boxing because, quite simply, he is boxing.