By William Mackay: Former 2008 Olympic Gold Medalist and current unbeaten pro James DeGale is giving former Olympic Gold Medalist Audley Harrison (27-4, 20 KO’s) a good chance of beating World Boxing Association (WBA) heavyweight champion David Haye (24-1, 22 KO’s) on November 13th if the fight goes past six rounds. Although DeGale is picking Haye to score a knockout by the 6th round, he thinks Harrison can pull off an upset if Haye is unable to take the big 6’6″ Harrison out in the first half of the fight. Speaking to BBC Sport, DeGale says “I think Haye is going to take him out in six. If it goes past six, Harrison has a good chance because Haye’s got stamina problems; He blows up in fights. There’s something in Audley’s eyes this time. He gets hungry. It’s going to be interesting.”

Haye is slimming down for this fight, so he’s unlikely to be as big as he was for his recent fights against John Ruiz and Nikolay Valuev. Haye weighed 222 for Ruiz and 217 for Valuev. In both cases, Haye looked a lot slower and hittable compared to when he was fighting at cruiserweight. Haye takes a risk either way no matter what his weight is for the fight. If he comes in too low, he could be overpowered by the huge 250+ Harrison, but if he weighs in the 220 range, he could end up being too slow and not have much of an advantage in terms of hand speed.

The added weight could also hurt Haye with his ring movements. Since moving up in weight, he’s moving more in circles around the ring to avoid getting hit and he looks sluggish with all the weight that he’s carrying around now. It would seem that Haye is coming in low for this fight because he plans on moving a lot to stay out of the range of Harrison’s spearing punches and his big left hand. Harrison is a much bigger puncher compared to the 7-foot Valuev, and Haye looked terrified of getting hit by Valuev.