What next for Audley Harrison?
Alex Riahi
Posted on: 07 December 2010 - 08:58
Boxing
Boxing fans can be very cruel and even unfair at times as the disdain and contempt which they bestowed upon Audley Harrison after his latest - and most probably last- display of boxing inability against David Haye, perfectly illustrates their merciless treatment of fighters that disappoint them, especially when said fighters exhibit a definite lack of heart and of fighting spirit.
But an interesting question remains:
Whatever gave us at any time the right to expect that Audley was going to be anything else than a local amateur talent with an impressive physique?
At what moment did the fans start to believe that they had a new Lennox Lewis to cheer and support and the promoters a new money machine to exploit?
Was it when he won 2 ABAs (1997 & 1998) at a time when quality super heavyweight amateurs in the UK were more difficult to find than an honest MP in Parliament, or was it when he won his Olympic Gold against Mukhtarkhan Dildabekov of Kazakhstan on points in Sydney in 2000, presumably thanking the Lord every day that Felix Savon of Cuba was not a super heavyweight.
But what is unarguable is that the whole nation was desperate to dream...
The business eagles at the BBC were dreaming that they were signing the future World Champion for a mere £1 million and patted themselves on the back for their shrewdness. The fans were dreaming that they had a real English super heavyweight to cheer and adore and for a while became delusional “en masse” and Audley, who by that time was also totally immersed in a dream of his own, began to really believe that he was a great champion in the making – a mixture of Tyson and Ali with a touch of Lewis - and pushed far back in the recess of his subconscious the fact that he could not stand to be hurt and that he hated fighting.
However, his “advisors” and most probably his whole team had by then started to perceive that their Bronze God might have the heart of a sheep and most of the time the speed of a koala, so they found him opponents that matched his very limited talent and who allowed him, to “keep on living the Dream”.
Harrison meanwhile, in what was to become his trade mark, made wonderfully belligerent and arrogant declarations to the press, wrote his autobiography and collected an MBE...It goes without saying that the whole circus put more than a few bobs in everyone’s pocket, to the exception of the BBC of course, but that is usually the case with the old Lady, so nobody cared.
When Audley he came back from the Olympic, just as he turned pro, at the Lions gym...He walked in surrounded by his “Team” as if he was already the Undisputed World Champion and, in all honesty, he was unbearably arrogant and condescending towards everyone as he explained to a mesmerized audience that he did not need Frank Warren or anyone to promote him and that he had formed his own Management and Promotion Company, the very optimistically named, “A Force Promotions”.
At the end of his peroration, he majestically entered the ring; shadow boxed for the gallery for a few minutes and then invited his first sparring partner to come through the ropes for a “Light sparring” couple of rounds.
An old man who was there that day looked at him showing off in the ring and muttered as much to himself as for my benefit: “The kid’s strong but not explosive...he’s got a good left but he pushes his punches and he’s scared to be hurt...He’ll never amount to much...shame...”
That day, the whole gym wanted to believe that this six foot six chiselled warrior was going to conquer the world and we felt privileged to have met him and to be there at the start of what was going to be without a doubt an amazing “journey”, so I dismissed the old man’s comments with a shrug of the shoulders and walked away…
Did our hero Audley know at the time that his manager(s) and promoter(s) were going out of their way to find him opponents that could not hurt him or, like Rocky Balboa, was he convinced that he was really fighting the best? Frankly, I don’t know and I don’t really care, as opposed to the suits at the BBC who obviously did, and who, in a rare moment of lucidity, did not renew his contract.
Harrison subsequently claiming that their decision was racially motivated would have been funny if the end result had not been that the BBC never got involved with boxing again after this fiasco and thus deprived deserving British boxers of a precious home televised platform to promote them....
Harrison then decided that “A...ME...RI...CA” alone was offering the proper rewards and professional environment suitable for a talent of his international dimension....so off he went and many a British fan breathed a sigh of relief and had a good laugh....
There is no point in talking here about his US misadventure or his well documented occasional return to our shores for a few unglamorous bouts, for, besides getting married to what appears to be a very lovely lady and fathering a wonderful kid, dear Audley, following his usual path, did not achieve much in real boxing terms during that time either.
He nevertheless managed to put food on the table and hopefully a little money aside for his old days by fighting a succession of non entities until he managed to unexpectedly become European Champion by throwing a desperate left hand that surprised everyone, himself included, and decked Michael Sprott for the count. That was all that David Haye required as an acceptable justification to offer him a shot at the world title; and an opportunity to redeem himself in the eye of the boxing community at large, whilst also, of course, make some serious money....well, forget the redeeming ... at least make some serious money; for never, not even for one millisecond did Haye and his brilliant trainer/manager Adam Booth ever envisaged that Audley could represent the slightest risk to derail their meticulously planned career that will hopefully culminate with an enormous payday against one of the Klishko brothers next year.
So suddenly Harrison was back home again and seen and heard everywhere, promising the fight of the decade, the revelation of the "Real Harrison" and, as his trainer Shadeed Suluki so eloquently declared whilst forecasting the annihilation of David Haye:
...."Audley knows himself now, he is in a very comfortable place, he knows his ability more than ever and this is his destiny, he feels it, I feel it, we all feel it. This is a match made in heaven for us....."and blablabla and blablabla...and everyone had again a good reason to cheerfully hate him and to relish the idea that he was going to get humiliated once more, which, all thrown in a melting pot and stirred masterfully by Haye, produced the most hyped and talked about fight at heavyweight for the fans to enjoy and of course buy tickets and Pay Per View!!.
As Haye so graciously put it: “People were really willing to pay to see Audley demolished”...
Credit to Harrison, he not only convinced himself in front of the cameras, whilst sitting on comfortable studio sofas with a cardboard cut out of Haye at his side, that he really was a dangerous fighter, but he also somehow managed to introduce a doubt in the minds of many well informed boxing commentators, ex pros and writers!
And so it went on that during an hour televised documentary about the two gladiators, our redeemed and by now “terrifying” Harrison explained to all of us that he had the most amazing team surrounding him, that by training in altitude he had gained a fantastic advantage on his old friend and present enemy, and that during long and secret conferences with his trainer and his advisors, and after having literally studied frame by frame all of Haye’s previous fights, they had devised a master plan that would show us all that not only he was the rightful Heavyweight Champion of the World but also that David Haye was nothing more than his student!
As he explained with tears in his eyes after the fight, the “plan” was to take Haye to the “deep end” by exhausting him during the first eight or nine rounds and then pounce and destroy....
Besides the fact that by the ninth round, had they all gone like the first two, either the arena would have been empty of fans and commentators or both fighters would have been asleep on their feet, there was of course one major flaw to this Machiavellian plan, which is that it did not take into account that dear Audley would freeze like a rabbit in front of a King Cobra the second he entered the ring.
David Haye had by then a similar problem to Schwarzkopf in 1991 during the first Gulf war....he could not find an enemy to fight and in both cases the paying public had been made to expect an all out war, so the champion avoided hurting Harrison during the first two rounds by literally walking around the ring and pretending to meticulously study his opponent reactions, quite a performance in itself, given the stubborn refusal to display any of the above mentioned reaction by Harrison who, clearly petrified by the possibility of being hit, decided to get into some sort of a transcendental trance and take himself somewhere else, anywhere else, as long as it was not in this ring...by the third round, David came to term with the fact that despite his encouragements Audley was not going to throw a punch.
The fans’ booing also made him realise that he was by now on the verge of losing some credibility and that it was time to put an end to this farce and go home...So suddenly, all hell broke loose in the Harrison’s cocoon of meditation...
Watching this 38 years old great hulk of a man with tears in his eyes being mercilessly interviewed on camera after his appalling inexistent performance made me feel sad and somewhat sorry for him, for I believe that the drama of his life is that he never really wanted to become a professional fighter but was literally pushed into it after his lucky break in Sydney and by the crazy and very temporary adulation that followed,.
There is an old Persian proverb that says:
"If you buy a donkey believing it is a racing horse, don’t blame the donkey for your stupidity."
Maybe the time has come to forgive ourselves for buying a donkey and stop blaming the poor animal for being...just a donkey.