By Sean McDaniel: Rather than take a dangerous fight against one of the Klitschko brothers which would give World Boxing Association heavyweight champion David Haye (24-1, 22 KO’s) a huge payday, he instead is looking for an easier but much smaller payday against Audley Harrison (26-4, 20 KO’s) on November 13th. The fight will likely take place at the O2 Arena in London or the M.E.N. Arena in Manchester, England. Both Haye and Harrison should get a nice payday out of this fight.

However, the interest in this bout will be confined to only the UK area, as the 38-year-old Harrison doesn’t have a fan base outside of England. Even Haye isn’t well known outside of the UK. This is why it was hopeful that he would step it up and fight one of the Klitschko brothers so that he could get more notoriety in other parts of the world. Wladimir Klitschko reportedly offered Haye a 50-50 deal with no options.

This is an unheard of contract offer, because Haye’s experience at heavyweight is slim, limited to almost exclusively older heavyweights nearing 40 like Monte Barrett, John Ruiz and Nikolay Valuev. Fans of Haye point to his wins over Valuev and Ruiz to show that Haye is a legitimate threat to the Klitschko brothers. However, it would be nice if Haye had at least taken on a couple of younger top heavyweights like Odlanier Solis, Denis Boytsov and Alexander Povetkin to prove that he can beat a younger fighter with speed and power rather than the older weak punching fighters.

Haye’s American promoters Golden Boy Promotions are excited about matching Haye up with the 38-year-old Harrison, perhaps seeing an easy big money fight for Haye. In an article at the Mirror.co.uk, Richard Schaefer, the CEO of Golden Boy, had this to say about the Harrison-Haye match-up: “The British media were telling me that the English fans were pretty excited about Audley Harrison and think that it could become one of the great showdowns between two British fighters. They’re both very outspoken and very charismatic and so we will see. Ultimately, of course, it will be David and Adam Booth of Haymaker Promotions dictating which way it’s going to go.”

Golden Boy Promotions also promotes WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan, who is taking heat recently because he’s still not fighting the very top fighters like Devon Alexander, Marcos Maidana and Timothy Bradley, and is being steered towards the older and smaller Juan Manuel Marquez instead.

British boxing fans would obviously prefer to see Haye fight the Klitschko brothers, but if Haye doesn’t want to take those fighters for whatever reason, they’ll for him fighting Harrison. The interest in that fight is that one of those two fighters would be losing and this would obviously bring a lot of pleasure for the fighter’s many detractors.

Haye won’t be doing himself any favors by taking on Harrison rather than the Klitschkos, because Haye said he was going to be a new type of heavyweight when he came into the division. He said wanted the Klitschko brothers and wanted to unify the titles. By choosing Harrison, it looks like Haye was just giving a lot of lip service and is going to milk his WBA title like a lot of champions do once they pick up a belt.