By Ricardo Lorenzo: Former Olympic gold medallist and European heavyweight champion Audley Harrison (27-5) recently said in an interview that he would love to fight either Tyson Fury or Dereck Chisora next in his career. He even stated that if he lost to either fighter that he would retire from boxing completely.

A-Force lost to David Haye back in November in an embarrassing fight in which he landed less than 5 punches and was knocked out in devastating fashion in the third round. Some people believed that Audley Harrison would back up his endless talk of landing his big left hand on David Haye’s jaw and knocking him out, he was unsuccessful in this.

Is it possible for Audley to beat young, up and coming heavyweights such as Tyson Fury and Dereck Chisora? Many would argue that at 39 and with some embarrassing defeats on his record such as that crushing defeat at the hands of Martin Rogan, a glorified Belfast taxi driver. Some might say that Audley should really hang up his gloves already.

I don’t see Tyson Fury or Dereck Chisora comfortably taking care of Audley Harrison, he’s too awkward and Dereck would have to really rough Harrison up on the inside and Fury would have to be prepared to take some big shots to give some big shots.

However, I believe that Audley should be given a shot at either of these fighters, while many people won’t agree. He needs to move away from his technique of pawing with the right hand then swinging a wild left hook and go back to the Audley of the Sydney Olympics, a boxer and not a power puncher. Audley looked awful against Michael Sprott when he captured the European heavyweight title. He was losing the fight on all of the judges’ scorecards until he landed his big left hand, if he had boxed and not looked for one punch for twelve rounds he could’ve easily taken care of Sprott.

My point is that throughout his career Audley Harrison has had all the tools to become a great heavyweight fighter, he unfortunately either hasn’t had the right tutelage to use them properly or just doesn’t like to box. If he wants to try and claw back some of his dignity and lose the name tags such as ‘Fraudley’ and ‘Audrey’ he should really try to get a fight with Chisora, Fury or any other credible heavyweight in the division and beat them convincingly and maybe he can mount a late career comeback, I’m not saying he’s future world champion, but he could finish his career with some good victories against respectable opposition.

I’m not bias in favour or against of Harrison, I just believe that he needs to prove some of his critics wrong before he can retire from boxing and he probably feels the same way. Many will argue it will be too little too late but who knows? Boxing is unpredictable.

Maybe Audley will do something unexpected, given the chance.