David Haye Says Derek Chisora Had the Best Chin He Ever Faced

David Haye beat plenty of hard men on his way to becoming a two-division world champion, but the one he can't stop talking about is Derek Chisora. Haye stopped him in the fifth round of their 2012 heavyweight grudge match, dropping him twice in a sustained final assault. And yet, more than a decade later, Haye rates Chisora's chin as the best he ever ran into.

The point Haye keeps coming back to is that Chisora finished the fight on his feet. He told Sun Boxing that he was landing shots the crowd probably didn't even clock as significant, but that they were big, heavy punches. Anyone else, Haye reckons, would've been out cold for ten minutes. Chisora just kept standing.

A Career Built on Big Nights

It's worth remembering the company Chisora is keeping here. Haye's resume includes dethroning Jean Marc Mormeck in 2007 — after climbing off the canvas to score a seventh-round finish against a champion nobody wanted to fight. Then came the 2009 split-decision win over 7ft Nikolai Valuev, whom Haye had wobbling by the final bell. Both were signature nights. Neither man, in Haye's telling, took punishment like Chisora did.

The Chisora fight arrived on the back of one of British boxing's more chaotic build-ups. After Haye put bare knuckles on Chisora's chin during a confrontation in Germany, Chisora spent the aftermath insisting he'd been glassed. The actual boxing match was one-sided the moment it started, but the chin held out longer than the scorecard ever suggested it should.

Still Going at 42

The remarkable part is that Chisora is still doing it. Now 42 and holding a 36-14 (23 KO) record, he remains an active heavyweight and only just came up short against Deontay Wilder in April, dropping a split decision. Wilder, unranked but carrying a 45-4-1 (43 KO) ledger and one of the most feared right hands in the sport's history, couldn't put him away either.

That's the throughline. From Haye's power in 2012 to Wilder's power in 2026, the biggest names in the division have taken cracks at Chisora's chin and come up empty. Haye's verdict feels less like nostalgia and more like a warning that's aged well: some fighters you finish, and some you just have to outbox, because the lights won't go out.