News yesterday that Britain's exciting heavyweight prospect, David Haye - ok he's already a World Heavyweight Champion, but still a prospect in my mind - has been unable to secure a fight with either of the Klitschko brothers. I don't know who's running scared here, but it's a disappointment either way because Haye needs to fight best-ranked opponents to gain real heavyweight credibility and actually cement a position as a true world champion.
Instead then, he finds himself fighting a former British hopeful, a man who won a gold medal at the 2000 Olympics. There were two clues that day to Audley Harrison's real potential. The first, obviously, was his age. No respectable fighter is still an amateur at 28. The second that he won as a Super-heavyweight which has always been inferior to the heavyweight division. It's a quirk of nature that men who are "too big" are naturally slower than genuine heavyweights and are often cumbersome. Dare I say it, they usually lack the killer intinct that gives top fighters their drive, determination and focus. And so it has proved for Audley, since cruelly dubbed "Audrey" and Fraudley."
Haye knows this is a soft option and a money-spinner. Harrison will hang-on for as long as possible, and I mean "hang-on." It will do Haye's reputation no good at all and will begin, for the first time, to associate Haye's career with all the hopeless British heavyweights of the past. I will be doing something else on 13th November.
They'll promote the fight as "What the public want to see" but in reality it's a sham. The Heavyweight Division has been very poor for years now. Especially in Britain. I wouldn't go to the fight if I had a free ticket. I used to look forward to our boxers fighting. Nigel Benn. Chris Eubanks etc. I just can't be bothered now.
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