By Dan Ambrose: In dissecting next month’s fight between WBA heavyweight champion David Haye (24-1, 22 KO’s) and 6’5” challenger Audley Harrison (27-4, 20 KO’s), it’s hard to pick which fighter will come out on top in this battle at the M.E.N. Arena, in Manchester on November 13th. Haye, 29, is the fighter that many boxing fans have selected to be the one to win this fight. However, Haye hasn’t fought anyone at heavyweight and in the one fight in which he took on the mediocre Nikolay Valuev, Haye didn’t look like a world class heavyweight in that fight.

Valuev may have been the champion due to skillful match-making, but he was more of a paper champion than a real one. Haye barely beat Valuev, and then came up with an excuse afterwards to blame his poor performance on a hand injury. From my perspective, Haye looked too afraid and too small to do much against Valuev. Had he rushed him and let his hands go, he might have been able to take Valuev out, but he also would have been in danger of being knocked out by the light hitting Russian fighter.

Harrison is around 6’5”, possibly 6’6”, He’s huge and has a big frame and the same reach as the 7-foot Valuev. Harrison punches much better than Valuev, and you can expect Haye to be giving Harrison a lot of respect on November 13th. Haye won’t want to get hit, and he’ll spend most of the fight running around the ring trying to throw one shot at a time.

If he can get Harrison just covering up and acting afraid, then Haye will open up with some combinations. But that’s about the only way that Haye will throw any combiations in this fight. He’s going to be too worried about his glass jaw to want to open up with any big shots of his own.

Haye does move better than Harrison, but he looks like a bodybuilder as he skips around the ring. If you watch him, you can see how all the movement negatively effects Haye, causing him to tire more than he should.

Haye really wastes too much energy with his nonsense movement. He must really worry about his chin for him to move as much as he does. It’s such a waste. I can see that being a factor in this fight because Haye may tire himself out and be easy pickings for Harrison if he does too much moving.