By Steven Ocallaghan: British heavyweight Audley Harrison, in preparing for his showdown with British heavyweight champion David Price at the Echo Arena on October 13th, is having 3 weeks of sparring with the unbeaten American heavyweight Deontay Wilder.
Wilder is of similar height and reach to Price but I don’t see anything else that he brings to the table. Yes 24 KOs in 24 fights, if you old call them that, more like exhibitions, will be looking to try and land some big shots on Harrison which will surely test the Brit but Harrison also has a big left hand with KO power, but we will be fortunate to hear any of this as its a closed doors exercise.
Wilder also sparred with David Haye in his prep for Wladimir Klitschko, but that never seemed to help that much.
I think Harrison could do much better in his choice of sparring partners as Wilder just doesn’t have the quality for him to learn anything. In one fight against an overweight Dustin Nicholls we had the 2008 Olympic Bronze medal winner showboating in the first round then getting caught from a guy who could not continue after 1 round because of his physical condition . That to me proves nothing
A better sparring partner would be somebody like Richard Towers. A big tall strong homegrown fighter who has more of a similar style to price. The sparring would be good for Towers as well after a poor performance in winning against the very average Sconiers . Sconiers almost had Wilder out on his feet.
If it was open to public sparring we could actually get some ideas as to how Wilder could cope against another big puncher. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying Harrison is a contender but he is a huge step up from the has-beens Wilder has been matched against.
GBP have a lot to answer too as well. All promoters, especially in the States are seemingly grooming fighters , padding their records, milking it to get the money fight. Then when they get beat, tossed to the side.
Promoters are damaging fighters careers, damaging their legacy with how they are being handled. For all we know Wilder could be promising but we are unlikely to find out soon.
All I know is he is a British Title contenders sparring partner.
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