Of the many reasons “the cruelest sport” is the most fitting moniker for the sport of boxing, the harsh reality that fighters rarely get to choose their ending is perhaps the best. Depleting physical abilities, decreasing market demand among other reasons more often than not take a fighter’s agency away in the autumn of their careers, and when winter hits, they’re too often left out in the cold.

Few fighters in recent times have been as explicit about their feelings about the realities of the boxing business as Derek Chisora has. It’s one of the many multitudes, sometimes contradict one another, inside Del Boy that have made him endlessly fascinating, and ultimately lovable.

That enduring and ever-evolving intrigue afforded him the ability to enjoy a rarity in boxing, a homeland sendoff bout against Otto Wallin at the Co-op Live Arena in Manchester on Saturday night, the asterisk being that it would be his final bout in the United Kingdom, the suggestion being that it could be his penultimate bout overall. Calls for, and even dalliances with retirement have been a theme surrounding Chisora since his one-sided loss to Tyson Fury in 2014. Time and time again, Chisora would have outings that would concern the public followed by ones that made them believe again, ones that made him doubt himself and ones that emboldened him. He announced his retirement in 2022, reaffirmed it in 2023, but then came back anyway. The hunger for competition, the thirst for the ability to entertain, were too tantalizing each and every time.

“Everybody always says, ‘Retire, retire, retire’, but let's be honest; nobody cares. It's bullshit. When people tell me to retire, because they care, It's bullshit," Chisora told The Sun last week. “I care about me, my kids care about me. The only people who care for me are my mother and my kids. I will retire when I want to retire. Nobody cares, they're only saying because it makes them feel good."

From his early days in the sport, Chisora has always been an antagonist, a bend he’s held onto even as his public image has transformed from detestable bad boy to beloved veteran. Chisora astutely pointed out that despite concern about his well-being over the years, fans weren’t—and continue not to be—so concerned as to look away. Part of the reason for that is that even the worst versions of Chisora on a given night have been as entertaining as any heavyweight on the planet. There’s also the fact that just when you think he’s gone on too long, or that he’s entered a stage of his career where he is merely a bloody action bout for hire rather than one capable of title picture relevance, he does something spectacular.

And damned if he didn’t do it again.

Chisora entered a UK arena on Saturday ostensibly for the last time as an active participant, and whether that proves to be true this time or not, in the moment it was clear that he himself believed it. As he walked through the hallways adorned with photos of his own fights, he broke down into tears, something he later said he promised himself he wouldn’t do.

For his sendoff, he’d originally planned a bout against Jarrell Miller in what would have been a matchup between two battering rams, the other being a 300-plus pound one. Instead, the opponent turned out to be Otto Wallin, a longtime Top-10 contender and tricky southpaw.

But as has always happened in Chisora fights not involving the aforementioned Fury, it turned into the kind of fight he wanted, as he once again bent the fight to his will. Chisora mauled Wallin from the early going, establishing the familiar pattern we’ve seen on the Good Chisora Nights in which he throws with volume to the body and then blasts his opponent with massive haymakers as they become other complacent or exhausted from the persistent physicality or both.

There was a moment in the sixth round however, where it looked like Chisora could have his agency snatched away in a cruel ending, as a gushing gash above his right eye was examined by the ringside physician. Certainly, similar cuts have produced the ending of fights in the past, but try as physicians might to be contextually oblivious when it comes to evaluating injuries, they’d probably seen enough Chisora fights to know that he’d be fine.

And he was. In the ninth round, Chisora landed a right hand that momentarily had Wallin levitating in a 90-degree chair-sitting pose before topping into the corner pad. Then in the final seconds, the actual last punch he could potentially throw in the United Kingdom, he floored Wallin again, sealing a lopsided decision victory.

The ultimate cognitive fate for Chisora can’t be fully known, let alone chosen, just as it can’t be for any person who chooses to take even a single blow to the head willingly. But through sheer determination, the final chapter of his career will be written solely by him. Chisora is popular enough to organize a farewell bout against a carefully selected opponent that would ensure him a victory on his way out.

The final contradiction in the memorable career of Derek Chisora is that the ending of his choosing will be one that by choice, he cannot control. As the winner of an IBF title eliminator, he’s positioned within a sanctioning body sufficiently to ask for a bout against titleholder Daniel Dubois or RING champion Oleksandr Usyk, two of the three options he laid out in addition to former champion Anthony Joshua. In any of the three bouts, Chisora would be an underdog, and a sizeable one, which is to say there’s a very good chance he would lose.

But Chisora wouldn’t have it any other way. He’s always chosen hard, and always chosen the route, both in terms of matchmaking and approach in the ring, that best pleases the fans.

At the end of the day, whether he feels like the fans ultimately care about him or not, he cares about them. Like a lovesick person in a courtship who will go into credit card debt to buy lavish gifts, Chisora can’t stop giving, whatever the consequences.

As Chisora took the microphone following his victory, his first words couldn’t have been more telling, more helpful in terms of understanding a man who is as crude and straightforward in the ring as he is complex outside of it.

“Please don't leave, I want to talk to you.”