Audley Harrison: Is it his destiny?
One common thread that has run throughout the career of Audley Harrison is his constant insistence that winning the heavyweight world title is his destiny.
If you could use a TV remote control to turn up and down the volume when Harrison is speaking at any point in the day chances are he will be saying the word destiny.
It’s hard to pin-point the first time he uttered this word, maybe just after the Olympic gold medal or maybe after that world-famous first professional victory over Mike Middleton in 2001, but at some stage in his career Harrison decided that the world had redefined its axis and now revolved around him.
Probably the reason why Harrison become a figure of fun within Britain is his relentless belief that he is a great, if not the greatest fighter ever to set foot on the planet. The truth is his destiny is more likely to be as a side-note rather than the main book.
Harrison has always loved talking himself up, something his one-time protégé and trash-talker extraordinaire David Haye has clearly learnt from. A-force spouts off-kilter hyperbole and psychological mumbo jumbo incessantly. As the interest for this fight grows he truly believes its fans flocking to see the return of the king, rather than the mild curiosity of seeing a freak show-style mismatch between a world champion and a fallen hero.
What is this destiny Harrison believes in? With four defeats including to the likes of Martin Rogan and Dominick Guinn in a career that never got out of second gear he could never been considered a true great. It’s almost like he kids himself into believing it, yet his rabbit-eyed, underwhelming approach to every fight does not appear to be that of a man convinced that he is a top-class fighter.
Haye picked up on the fact that Harrison over-thinks things and has a plan B, C, D and E, and ends up getting into a muddle. It’s clear that psychologically something has always been lacking from Harrison. In fact the two highlights of his professional career have come through necessity, a KO against Coleman Barrett to win Prizefighter and a late KO to win the European strap against Michael Sprott. Had Harrison lost either of those fights his career would have been over and so he had no choice but throw out his big left.
Harrison’s head must be a strange place indeed, adorned with framed pictures of himself unifying the heavyweight championship having pulled himself up by his boot straps from the toughest street in the toughest ghetto on earth with nothing but a pair of boxing gloves and a dream. There are probably rows of bookshelves filled with tomes on his teachings and philosophies while every single business, product and appliance would be manufactured by his A-force brand.
If he had stopped living in this dream world from the start, got proper management and focused on how to detonate that deadly left, his precious destiny could have been fulfilled a long time ago and he genuinely could have succeeded Lennox Lewis and become a world champion. Instead he landed a world title by sheer luck and now spouts rubbish like a mad-man who has found someone willing to listen.
On Saturday Harrison will finally fulfil his destiny; it’s just that it may not be the one he wants.
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