By Sean McDaniel: While some boxing fans see this Saturday night’s fight between 39-year-old challenger Audley Harrison (27-4, 20 KO’s) and WBA heavyweight champion David Haye (24-1, 22 KO’s) as just another case of Haye milking his World Boxing Association title for all it’s worth, Haye’s trainer/manager Adam Booth sees Harrison as a real threat to beat Haye in this fight, which will be taking place at the M.E.N. Arena, in Manchester, England.
In speaking with Sky Sports News, Booth says “Harrison is as dangerous as any heavyweight. He’s an 18-stone man with a lot of pride and a lot of desire in this fight. That desire and the fact he’s putting himself into a trance, he’s hypnotizing himself over the last few weeks so he can go into character that he needs to be in this fight. I expect him to be a big threat – a very tense affair.”
Booth seems to have a wrong-headed way of looking at this fight. Harrison doesn’t want to win this fight because he’s putting himself into a trance or anything weird like that. Harrison wants to win because he wants to get the big money that he’ll be guaranteed if he beats Haye. If Harrison wins Saturday’s fight, he’s basically set for life in terms of money. Harrison would then be able to pick between a big money rematch with Haye or an equally big money unification bout with one of the Klitschko brothers.
Harrison would be getting the kind of money that has eluded him since his contract with the BBC was discontinued. And besides that, Harrison wants to pay Haye back for him turning his back on him when he needed him and asked to be put on one of Haye’s undercard fights. This is Harrison’s way of paying Haye back for that, and for a sparring session that took place in the past in which Harrison says Haye went all out to try and show off in front of Lennox Lewis.
A loss for Haye would be a huge blow for him, because he sidestepped a really big money fight with one of the Klitschko brothers to take the Harrison bout, which Haye obviously sees as an easy way for him to make good money without the threat of being stomped like he almost surely would if and when he faces one of the Klitschko brothers in the future. However, Harrison can punch, is huge at 6’5” 250 pounds, and Haye, 6’2” 217, and is a small heavyweight with a weak chin. Harrison can win this fight if he lands one of his big left hands or takes Haye deep and overpowers him on size alone.
Booth continues “Because he’s [Harrison] put himself in that trance with all the positive mantras, David’s challenge is firstly to wake him up from that so he becomes the Audley that he really is – then we’ll put him to sleep.” Has Booth ever considered that Harrison feels he can win because of how beatable Haye looks? It isn’t as if Haye has fought anyone since moving up to the heavyweight division. Haye has been handled with kid gloves since moving up in weight, matched against 38-year-old Monte Barrett, 38-year-old John Ruiz and 36-year-old Nikolay Valuev and now 39-year-old Valuev. To say that Haye has been put in soft would be kind to him. He’s been protected since moving up in weight, and the fact that he seems unwilling to fight the Klitschkos makes it clear that Booth and Haye have concerns about how good he is.
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