By Sean McDaniel: It was an easy night’s work for WBA heavyweight champion David Haye (25-1, 23 KO’s) on Saturday night against challenger Audley Harrison (27-5, 20 KO’s) in a total blowout win for Haye. Harrison never got his offense untracked in the fight, only throwing one punch in the three rounds of action. Haye capitalized on this by unloading with some bombs in the 3rd to first knock Harrison down and then take him out after he got back to his feet after receiving an eight count.
In an article at Sky Sports News, Haye said “I was hoping he’d give me some riddles to try to overcome, I was hoping he’d throw me a curveball. He didn’t – he seemed petrified. At the weigh-in I could see him trembling and I thought the fight was going to be short and sweet.”
Indeed, Harrison looked frightened during the weigh-in on Friday. At one point, Harrison seemed barely able to answer questions because he seemed so keyed up. He even walked away from one of the Sky Sports analysts in the middle of an interview. That’s not like Harrison. And during the fight, Harrison seemed paralyzed and totally unable or unwilling to throw any punches. He was obviously fearful of being countered by Haye and didn’t want to give him any opportunities to land one of his bombs. What’s sad is that Harrison didn’t seem to trust his own chin that he could take Haye’s shots, because he likely would have been okay even if he were hit in the process of throwing one of his left hand shots. Harrison had the reach on Haye and his power was more than enough to stop Haye if only he had the presence of mind to throw something.
Haye did very little punching himself in the first couple of rounds, and the crowd hated the lack of action. Haye claimed after the fight that he had bet on stopping Harrison in the 3rd, and that was why Haye didn’t throw many shots in the first two rounds him. That would be something that you believe perhaps, but Haye also said that he was waiting on Harrison to throw something so that he could take advantage of it. I don’t buy Haye’s excuse about having money on the fight. I think Haye was scared as well and not comfortable with letting his hands go until he realized that Harrison wasn’t going to throw anything at him and he had nothing to worry about.
Haye says “I was so razor sharp, I was on it. Round three came, I thought ‘okay, put a little more pressure on him, he’ll try to throw something’ – as soon as he tried to throw something I hit him with the right hand, I saw his legs go. Once I get someone hurt, I close it. I think he’ll be bitterly disappointed when he looks at the punch stats and realizes he threw only one jab in two-and-a-half rounds of boxing. He talked a lot about what would happen if that left hand detonated on my chin, but he didn’t throw it. He’ll kick himself for that.”
Haye didn’t look sharp at all for the most part. He simply took advantage of a fighter that was too paralyzed with fear to let his hands go and scored an easy victory by default. Haye did do well once he had Harrison hurt, but Harrison might as well have given him a welcome sign by backing up to the ropes and just covering up. Harrison fought a really poor fight from start to finish. There wasn’t one thing that Harrison did that was smart in that fight.
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