by David P. Greisman

The development continues for Isaac Chilemba, according to his trainer, Buddy McGirt.

Chilemba had neared a title shot twice before, fighting to a draw with Tony Bellew in early 2013 and then losing their rematch less than two months later. Since then, he’s fought three times, outpointing Michael Gbenga and Denis Grachev, then stopping Cory Cummings last year.

He’s due to fight undefeated prospect Vasily Lepikhin on HBO on Saturday’s undercard to Sergey Kovalev vs. Jean Pascal.

Chilemba’s got to “handle our business tomorrow night,” McGirt said on Friday. “The sky’s the limit after that. … A guy like Isaac is hungry so you don’t really have to motivate him. He knows what he has to do to get to the next level.”

They’re working on a lot in the gym, McGirt said, including breaking him of a bad habit of taking after a great fighter.

“He used to always like to fight like Roy Jones, which I told him is OK, but there’s going to come a time where you’ve got to be Isaac Chilemba,” McGirt said. “You can’t win all your fights being Roy Jones. It’s OK to add it on to what you do best, but we got to work on that, so we’ve been working on that. He has a little bit of everything. I don’t think he’s really found himself yet

“We’re working on different things, helping him stand his ground a little more, giving angles a little more. Doing something different. When you do Roy Jones, everyone knows Roy Jones’ system. It’s the same thing over and over. No offense to Roy. Roy was good at it. But there’s only one Roy Jones, just like there’s only one Michael Jordan. So you can add a little bit to it, but you can’t copy that, emulate that and expect to be successful.”

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