By Jim Dower: Heavyweight Audley Harrison (27-4, 20 KO’s) is proving to be a clutch performer as he came from behind and stopped Michael Sprott (32-15, 17 KO’s) in the 12th round on Friday night to win the vacant EBU heavyweight title at the Alexandra Palace, Wood Green, London. It was a fight in which the 38-year-old Harrison trailed badly on all three judges’ cards going into the final round and needed a knockout else to win.

Things looked bad for Harrison at the start of the 12th, as Sprott viciously attacked Harrison with hard combinations to the head and backing Harrison up against the ropes. Shortly thereafter, Sprott landed a hard right hand while the two fighters were in the center of the ring, sending Harrison flying backwards to the ropes where he covered up while Sprott unloaded a barrage of punches.

Incredibly, Harrison turned Sprott around where Sprott was the one that had his back against the ropes, and then Harrison measured Sprott and then hit him with a hard left hook to the head that sent Sprott down on his back. The fight was stopped by referee Dave Parris at 1:05 of the 12th round. What made the victory even more meaningful was that Harrison had fought with pretty much only his left hand from the 5th round until the end of the fight in the 12th.

Harrison said after the fight that he had injured his right shoulder in the 2nd round. However, Harrison was able to continue using his right arm until the 5th, when he started using only his left hand to do damage. It was clear to all that Harrison had injured his right arm, because he turned his fighting stance from southpaw to orthodox and threw a lot of jabs and weird looking left hooks from that stance.

Harrison looked very uncomfortable fighting from the orthodox stance and appeared uncoordinated at times, showing that he hasn’t worked on this too much in the past. Sprott was able to really capitalize on Harrison having only one good hand by hammering him with hard right hands and combinations over Harrison’s left guard. Audley looked completely lost in how to defend in fighting out of the orthodox stance and took a lot of heavy shots to the head.

As the rounds went by, Harrison fell farther and farther behind in the fight to the point where he needed a knockout or at least multiple knockdowns in the last three rounds to win the fight. Starting in the 9th, Sprott started showing signs of tiring. This allowed Harrison to start landing some nice left hands, particularly uppercuts to the head of Sprott.

With the fight looking bad for Harrison, he seemed to put his offense into another gear, as he started throwing harder left hands. Not being able to use his right was a really crippling thing for Harrison, though, because it seemed to throw off his offense and limit what he could do. Never the less, in the 12th round, Harrison was fighting for his career, showing good poise during Sprott’s early attack in the round.

The left hand that Harrison landed to knock Sprott out was a thing of beauty. It was thrown with huge power and perfect timing and reminded me of a shot from Lennox Lewis. If Harrison had thrown a shot with that much power earlier in the fight, he would have likely had Sprott out much sooner. Harrison can punch when he wants to but seems to need have his back against the wall to really fight with the kind of intensity that he needs.