By Sean McDaniel: Former WBC super middleweight champion Carl Froch lays the blame for last weekends fiasco bout between Audley Harrison and WBA heavyweight champion David Haye squarely in the lap of Harrison instead of giving partial blame to Haye for having picked Harrison in the first place to fight instead of a better opponent. The fight ended with Harrison getting dripped out in a 3rd round TKO after having thrown only one punch – a jab – in the fight. Haye threw few punches himself until the 3rd round, and bragged afterwards about having waited until that round because he had bet money on stopping Harrison in the 3rd.

In an article at the telegraph.co.uk, Froch says “Audley Harrison is quite a soft, gentle guy. He gives it all the talk but, when he’s in the ring, you can see he’s scared to death. Your personality comes out when you fight and when I fight, I mean business….People shouldn’t be annoyed or asking for their money back. Because he’s Audley Harrison, Olympic Gold Medalist, world class talker, he sold it. he’s big, strong, he can punch and everyone got roped in. And, because 90% of people don’t like him, it was justifiably a pay-per-view attraction, even though it wasn’t a fight that people will rewind and watch again.”

Froch is conveniently leaving out Haye’s part in promoting this fight. It wasn’t just Harrison that made this a fight that boxing fans wanted to see. It was Haye that had a huge part in making it seem as if it would be a fight, because he seemed to give the impression that Harrison was going to come to fight. It may have been a PPV attraction, because Harrison is better known compared to the other up and coming British heavyweights because of his prior Olympic experience, but it wasn’t a fight that should have been made due to Harrison’s struggles against mediocre heavyweights in the past.

Froch says “I paid my money to watch it, but I knew it was going to be a whitewash. I had no expectations. The non-boxing, armchair fan who tuned in and bought it will be put off by the sport, but they need to realize that Audley Harrison has been manipulating the press and TV for years. He got people to believe something that doesn’t exist, and he ruins if or everyone else.”

I don’t know that I’m putting all this on Harrison. Haye also had a part in this, because it was his choice to fight Harrison rather than a better heavyweight, and he certainly helped drum up interest in the fight. It wasn’t Harrison doing all the promoting for the fight all by himself.