Derek Chisora has never met a microphone he didn’t want to wrestle, so of course he went big. BoxingScene’s headline sums up the whole thing in one line: “Deontay Wilder will knock out Oleksandr Usyk,” says Chisora. No hedging, no “on his night,” no escape hatch. I respect that a lot. Fight sports run on people calling their shot, and the only predictions worth making are the ones you can be embarrassingly wrong about.
So here’s mine. Chisora’s pick is the most defensible crazy pick in boxing right now. There’s exactly one way that fight goes Wilder’s way, and it happens to be the one thing he carries into every ring he’s ever walked into. Nobody sane is picking Wilder to outwork Usyk or out-think him in a long tactical fight. The pick is the right hand. A right hand doesn’t check the scorecards, and it doesn’t care how pretty your footwork looked for the first half of the night.
Even Bloody Elbow, writing a story that had nothing to do with Chisora, called Wilder a “hard-hitting former heavyweight world champion” without blinking. That’s his whole reputation in four words, and it’s the reason a prediction like this gets a headline instead of a laugh. Nobody writes a headline about some guy with a nice jab outpointing the champion. Power is the great equalizer in heavyweight boxing because it only has to work once, and every elite technician in history has had to spend 100% of the night being right while the puncher only needs a single moment.
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The calendar is the problem
This is where I step off the hype train for a second. Usyk isn’t anywhere near Wilder’s schedule, and Wilder might already have a dance partner.
During Friday night’s Power Slap event, Dana White hopped on Nina Drama’s Kick stream and was asked about Sean Strickland wanting to box Jai Opetaia. White shot that down, saying he “doesn’t think it ever goes good crossing over to boxing from MMA,” and then dropped the bigger nugget. He said there’s a good chance Opetaia fights Wilder, and Bloody Elbow reported White floated the Fury vs Joshua undercard in December as the spot. Wilder’s manager confirmed interest in the fight earlier that same day.
Meanwhile, Usyk’s camp is taking calls from the bare-knuckle crowd. BKB CEO David Tetreault told EssentiallySports he’d had the same conversations with Usyk’s people that he’d had with Tyson Fury’s, and said of the champion, “He’s got some business to finish in boxing, but it’s always an open door.” Sports Illustrated noted back in 2025 that Usyk had shown interest in Alex Pereira, too, and that idea is basically dead now that Pereira’s coach Plinio Cruz says a boxing move is “kind of impossible” with seven fights left on his UFC deal at 39.
So Usyk’s phone is ringing with bare-knuckle pitches and UFC daydreams. Wilder’s name isn’t the one lighting it up. That’s the gap between Chisora’s quote and reality.
Why Opetaia matters more than the quote
The Opetaia fight, if it happens, is the perfect lab test for Chisora’s theory. Opetaia is Zuffa Boxing’s cruiserweight champion, and White’s plan has him finally making his long-awaited jump to heavyweight. That’s a reigning champion coming up from a lighter division to see whether he can survive the scariest hitter on the card. It’s a smaller-scale preview of exactly the question Chisora is asking about Usyk.
If Wilder lands and Opetaia goes to sleep, Chisora looks like a prophet and the Usyk conversation gets loud in a hurry. If Opetaia spends the night making Wilder miss and walks out with his hand raised, the prediction dies on the undercard of somebody else’s mega fight, which would be a brutal way for a big swing to go out.
And Wilder’s name keeps popping up in other people’s mouths. Jake Paul put him on the hit list he posted to X, the one that opened with “Before I rest” and ran through Canelo Alvarez, Francis Ngannou, Conor McGregor and a dozen more. That’s a fun inclusion from a guy who, per MMA Mania, said he’d avoid heavyweight after Anthony Joshua broke his jaw in Miami on Dec. 19, 2025. Darren Till, also on the list, answered Paul with “Stop talking shite I would flat line you inside of 5,” which is the most British sentence ever typed and a better callout than half the official press conferences I’ve sat through this year.
The point is that Wilder still moves the needle. Promoters want him, YouTubers want the payday, and a veteran like Chisora is willing to stake his credibility on Wilder’s right hand against the best heavyweight on the planet.
I’ll co-sign the logic and hold off on the pick. Power is the only argument, and it’s a real one. Wilder just has to prove it against the guy White is trying to put in front of him first. If he can’t knock out the man moving up from cruiserweight in December, nobody should be booking him against the man who runs heavyweight.
