Sunday 14 November 2010

David Haye vs Audley Harrison: Bye Bye Audley


I watched a recording of the David Haye, Audley Harrison fight this afternoon. What can you say.

A great sporting event, a great deal of hype, but as a boxing contest totally irrelevant!

After two rounds of no boxing, Haye stepped things up to stop Harrison in the third round.

I have a certain amount of sympathy for Audley Harrison, he was humiliated last night, but this is a man that simply does not possess the attributes needed to be a successful professional boxer.

In the last few weeks I was looking forward to this fight, but then last night as the fight approached I suddenly thought I'm not that bothered about watching it. Perhaps it's because deep down I knew what to expect.

I decided to tune into BBC Radio 5 live to listen to some of the commentary. At around 10:20 I'd already left it too late as the fight was over.

What I did do was listen to an hour of listeners phoning in to voice their views on the fight. The general consensus was that the fight was an embarrassment for British boxing.

Lets be honest here, if Audley Harrison was any other boxer he wouldn't have been anywhere near this world title fight.

As a pure boxing contest, this fight made no sense. From a box office, PR view point then this was the ideal fight to stage.

Anyone who wins an Olympic boxing gold medal deserves some respect, and this is what Audley Harrison has achieved, but in his professional career he'd shown nothing to suggest he could ever seriously challenge for a world title.

Credit to David Haye he talks the talk and he's delivered by becoming world champion.

Audley talked a great game, gave a great sales pitch in the build up to this fight, but when the taking had to stop we discovered a man who only managed to throw one punch that connected in just under 9 minutes of fighting. That's pathetic!

In this country we don't mind sports people losing, (we're hardly that big a nation of winners) we love the underdog, the person who tries, who goes down fighting, all guns blazing. Unfortunatly this isn't Audley, it never has been.

For this reason he will never have the respect or affection of the British sporting public.

After the fight I watched some of Sky's post fight analysis. Former world champion Barry Mcguigan was scathing and brutally honest in his assessment of Audley's performance, and his overall career.

Delusional was the word he used to describe Harrison's belief in his boxing abilities. Very harsh, but so true.

This has to be the end of his career, a career that should never have involved Harrison setting foot inside a professional boxing ring.

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