18.02.07 – By Matthew Collin: Last night at Wembley Arena fight fans witnessed the derailing of one of the great hype machines of twenty first century boxing. Audley Harrison’s dream of fulfilling his ‘destiny’ of becoming heavyweight champion ended with the sound of his 18 stone-plus frame landing on the canvas, and with it concluded one of sport’s most emphatic cautionary tales. Harrison (now 21-3, 16 ko’s) had at least gone some way to redeeming himself with a strong showing last time out against an admittedly under-prepared and perhaps past-it Danny Williams, but came up against a prepared and ready Michael Sprott ( now 30-10, 15 ko’s) who wasn’t willing to be bullied by a bigger and heavily favoured opponent.
Now, it would be easy to do the obvious thing and crow from the rooftops about how Harrison has finally got his comeuppance. However, I’d rather try to put last night’s effort and the preceding events into some sort of context.
Harrison started well, working behind an effective jab and backing Sprott up with some quick fire punches, varying his work and using a particularly effective and nasty looking right hook to the body. Sprott looked overmatched, and tasted the canvas in the first, the result of a beautiful punch which caught him on the temple. It was a flash knockdown, and Sprott recovered well. In the second round Sprott seemed to work a little better to his game plan, which was clearly to cover up behind a tight guard and draw the sting from Harrison’s work. As the round progressed Sprott became more confident, meeting fire with fire and working well with a consistent left-right to the body. Harrison seemed to become more cautious, and to this writer the familiar timidness was beginning to creep back in.
The third round saw Sprott grow in confidence, shoving the bigger Harrison back and throwing some good shots to both body and head. He got away with one blatantly low blow which the referee missed, and after a messy period of holding and pushing, came the moment it all went wrong for Harrison. Sprott, crouching low, threw a right to the body which momentarily brought Harrison’s hands down, and followed it up with the kind of left hook you last saw being thrown by Sylvester Stallone. Harrison didn’t see it coming, and it detonated on his chin with full force. And that, as they say, was that. Harrison, prone on the floor, left leg twitching from the power of the shot, didn’t even merit a count. He was gone, and with it, his professional career, and hopes of redemption in the eyes of the boxing world.
The simple fact of the matter is that Harrison’s belligerent and arrogant attitude has left him with nowhere to hide. Sprott is not a bum, neither is he a world beater. He has some good wins against strong opposition, but he has been beaten ten times. I am pleased as punch for him, and I hope he goes on to capitalize on such a high-profile win – he is one of the sport’s good guys. However, from Harrison’s perspective, if he wanted to keep an already shaky bandwagon on track, he had to put Sprott away, and in style. Nothing else would have done. The reality is, he has almost had his head taken off by a decent level domestic operator.
Audley’s case isn’t helped by the current state of the division. After his Olympic triumph, and riding on a wave of public goodwill not seen since Frank Bruno, he told us he would be champ. And boy did we buy it. Not only that, but the BBC bought it too, paying him £1m to knock over a series of no-hopers on prime time TV. If we’d seen steady progress, we’d have forgiven this – every fighter needs to move up in class steadily and not be over-exposed. However, by this time Audley was too tied up in his own hype, and the public persona he presented was one of arrogance. Promoting himself, he clearly felt that all he had to do was turn up and eventually a title belt would magically appear around his waist. This led to a climate of people tuning in in the hope that he was beaten, and once that point is reached it is very difficult to turn public opinion around. Audley has some big boots to fill. In Britain, we like our heroes, we like our glorious losers, all we want is humility and a demonstration that 100% has been given. Audley’s problem is that in the early stages it was all handed to him on a plate. People told him he would be great, and he believed it. His losses to solid but not world class operators like Danny Williams and Dominic Guinn showed us there were problems, and that there were several question marks around key areas. Heart, chin, and desire are three of the most important attributes a boxer can have, and unfortunately, Audley seems to have been found wanting on all counts.
So what now? For me, that’s it. He should retire. We know he won’t though. His post fight interview was bordering on fantasy. The man clearly believes he can still cut it, and even insisted he felt he was in a position to continue after the knockdown. Audley, it’s pretty difficult to continue a boxing match when you are asleep. He could go on to challenge Scott Gammer at British Title level, but having only won one out of his last four fights against decent but not great opposition, I’d back Gammer at this point. I don’t think Audley’s ego will allow him to become a domestic journeyman, so we’ll probably see him again soon. Against who, I don’t know, but I can say that I won’t be tuning in. To some extent I believed the hype in the early days, wanting so much for Britain to have another boxing hero like Lewis and Bruno. Unfortunately, I know now that we’ll have to wait a bit longer, because Audley Harrison isn’t that man.