By Scott Gilfoid: WBA heavyweight champion David Haye (24-1, 22 KO’s) faces his most dangerous opponent since moving up in weight to heavyweight when he faces Audley Harrison (27-4, 20 KO’s) this Saturday night at the M.E.N. Arena, in Manchester, England. Instead of picking out a higher ranked heavyweight contender, Haye, 30, is dealing from the bottom of the top 15, picking out the number 14 WBA ranked Harrison to fight rather than a more dangerous and deserving Denis Boytsov and Alexander Povetkin.
Whatever the case, Harrison still has a chance because Haye is a weak champion and far below the other two heavyweight champions Vitali and Wladimir Klitschko in talent and ability. Harrison has a great chance of knocking Haye out simply because Haye really isn’t that great either. What we have here is two flawed heavyweights from the UK, one of them nearing 40, and the other clearly milking his title and avoiding the Klitschko brothers to protect his title.
In speaking with the Telegraph.co.uk, Haye says this about Harrison: “All this talk from Audley tells me he is mentally weak. I do think he’s a little bit crazy and lost the plot. Audley is a mentally weak person. Look through his fights when he has been under pressure and failed to pull the trigger when he needed to. It will all bubble to the surface when we get in the ring. When we both get in that ring, and I look in his eyes he’ll be petrified.”
If you look at a number of Haye’s interviews, you’ll notice that he’s really big on being able to scare or try to scare his opponents by staring at them before fights. He likes to try and intimidate his opponents before the fight. However, it seems really contrived and he seems to be the one who is afraid in most of the cases. If not, he wouldn’t run around the ring the way he does when he fights. I don’ t think Harrison will be the least afraid on November 13th.
I expect him to go out and give his best shot at knocking Haye out as fast as possible. Whether he can do that remains to be seen, but I don’t think fear will be Harrison’s problems. Where things will go wrong for Harrison is if he’s unable to land one of his shots. His accuracy is often lacking and he has no real jab despite having long arms. Harrison really only has his left hand and not much else to fight Haye with. That’s why Harrison needs to go for broke early and often with that weapon and hope for the best.
Haye says “I am looking at inflicting as much damage as a British Board of Control official will allow. I am looking at going out there and really inflict some pain.”
If Haye ends up stopping Harrison, it probably won’t get to the point where he beats him up and inflicts damage. Haye usually knocks out people fairly quickly, and if he is going to score a knockout, it will happen early. If the fight goes past the 6th, it will be Haye that gets stopped because he has no stamina and runs around like a weight lifter around the ring. He can get away with it in fast bouts, but ones where it goes past six, Haye tires like a weight lifter not used to running. Haye will then weaken, lose power, and then get stopped.
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