Right Then, The Bull Is Back
Right then. Nine months is a long time to be away when you are a heavyweight with a following like this one. On Saturday night at the Copper Box Arena in London, Johnny Fisher finally gets back in there, against Belgium's Michael Pirotton, over ten rounds and live on Sky Sports.
It is his Zuffa Boxing debut, and it is his third time headlining at the Copper Box. That building and that away support have become a proper thing over the last couple of years — the Romford lot travel four stops on the Overground and turn a mid-size arena into something that sounds like a promotion two levels above where it actually is. Make no mistake, that atmosphere is a genuine asset and Saturday will be no different.
What is different is the pressure. Johnny Fisher is 14-1 now, not 14-0, and everything about this fight is being read through that.
What The Dave Allen Fights Actually Told Us
Let's not beat around the bush about the elephant in the room. Dave Allen beat him in the rematch in five rounds in 2025, and that was after a first fight most neutrals thought Allen had won on the night anyway.
Here is my honest reading of it, and I have said this before. Allen is a far better fighter than his record and his self-deprecation ever let on, and losing to him is not the disgrace people wanted it to be. What the two fights exposed was not a soft chin. It was a fighter who had been moved fast, who had never been asked a real question, and who did not yet have the tools to solve one in real time.
He stopped Ivan Balaz in December to get the taste out of his mouth. That was a job, not an answer. Saturday is the first time since Allen that anyone has been put in front of him with a pulse and an argument.
Pirotton Is Not Here For The Scenery
Pirotton is 12-2 with six stoppages. Two defeats in 2025, two wins in 2026, and — this is the number that matters — he has never been dropped in fourteen professional fights. Not once. He has built his career between Belgium and the United States and he has never boxed in England before.
He has also spent fight week telling anyone with a microphone that Fisher's mind is broken and that the pressure on him is too much. That is exactly what you want to hear from a man in the away corner. It is either a fighter who genuinely believes it or a fighter smart enough to know that saying it might make it true. Either way he is not coming to lose politely.
The profile is awkward. Fisher is a big, heavy-handed, front-foot heavyweight who wants a target that stands still and trades. Pirotton is durable, he has been in with better than his record suggests, and his entire path to an upset is to make it long, messy and uncomfortable and see whether the crowd noise curdles into something else around round six.
How Fisher Wins It
Patience, and the body. That is the whole answer.
The Allen rematch went the way it did because Fisher tried to solve a problem in one punch and got caught doing it. Against a man who has never been off his feet, headhunting for ten rounds is the surest way to look ordinary. Go downstairs early, take the legs, let the head shots land later when they are worth something. He has the frame and the weight of shot to do exactly that.
The thing I will be watching in the first three rounds is whether he is boxing or auditioning. If he is jabbing, setting his feet and working the body, this is a comfortable night. If he is loading up looking for the highlight in round two because he knows what people have been saying about him, it gets long.
Luke's Verdict
I think the noise around the Allen fights has flattened out a good fighter's reputation a bit too far. Fisher is levels above Pirotton in power and he is fighting at home in front of a crowd that will not let him drift.
But I am not calling a blowout, because fourteen fights without ever touching the canvas is not an accident. Pirotton will take him into the second half.
Johnny Fisher by stoppage in the eighth or ninth, off accumulation and body work rather than one big shot. If it goes to a decision I still have Fisher clearly, and if he is stopped inside six then the conversation about his ceiling becomes a very different one.
He does not need to look brilliant on Saturday. He needs to look like a man who has learned something. That is the whole test.
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