07.12.06 – by Gabriel DeCrease
I’ll tell you one thing, big man, it’s nae the fighting that bothers me. The fighting’s the easy part. It’s the living that’s the killer. -Scott Harrison, on his recent harsh-times
According to a public statement released Wednesday by his father and trainer Peter Harrison World Boxing Organization (WBO) featherweight champion Scott “The Real McCoy” Harrison will abdicate his title due to the impossibility of safely making weight in time for his scheduled title defense against European Boxing Union (EBU) titleholder Nicky Cook. This decision comes at the end of a long and very-much self-inflicted period of instability and turmoil for the now 29-year-old Harrison.
Harrison has long been known to boxing fans and journalists as a fun-loving, hard-drinking, and decidedly brackish Wildman. The fighting Scotsman seemingly began to suffer the ill-effects of his lifestyle in May of this year when a string of arrests forced him to withdraw from a title defense against Aussie-technician Gairy St Clair.. The arrests—and six subsequent charges filed against Harrison—were the result of a series of disruptive, destructive, and ultimately violent incidents that occurred in various popular pubs in Glasgow, Scotland. The charges, filed in September, included, but were not limited to assault, fraud, and disorderly conduct.
Harrison was subsequently treated for depression, and reportedly, for alcoholism at a Glasgow treatment/rehabilitation center. In a subsequent incident on October 6, Harrison was again jailed after a nightclub incident in southern Spain in which he apparently caused some ruckus with fellow patrons and proceeded later—in an attempt to steal an automobile—to strike a Spanish police officer. The champion was held at Alhaurin De La Torre maximum-security prison in Malaga for almost six weeks before being released on $37,000 bond. The photos taken as he walked out of the prison gates were of a man trying in futility to smile past the surly realization that he had—at least temporarily—defeated his own good-fortune, talent, and ability to rebound from self-inflicted handicaps.
As it turns out, Harrison’s look of grim foreshadowing was justified. The drinking, the time out of the gym, and the general undisciplined lifestyle he loved so well bullied his body quickly out of fighting shape. Though he is back to heavy workouts, the weight simply did not come off fast-enough, and the prevailing press-speculation is that Harrison would not feel up to fighting a firecracker like Nicky Cook even if he could make the scales by fight-time.
These tragic events have likely been in the making for some time. But young fighters are often so miraculously able to live a whiskey-drenched, sleepless, hard-knock life, and still make the scales and fight at the highest level. Johnny Tapia, Arturo Gatti, and Julio Cesar Chavez all performed this trick while raking up alphabet titles and turning in legendary performances. But this act has a short shelf-life. Once a fighter is staring down 30, a crazy life begins to wreak havoc and cripple where it once seemed to embolden. The hope is that Harrison will take full advantage of this low-moment in his career as an occasion to refocus, rethink his habits, and return to the ring a changed man poised for the latter days of his illustrious and electrifying career. There is, at least, a speck of light in the dark corner Scott Harrison has boxed himself into. Harrison says, “This year has been an absolute roller coaster, and I wouldnae wish it on anybody. But to be honest I cannae remember half-of-it! I can remember the start of it and the last few months in and out of jail—but the worst bits in the middle of the year have gone. I cannae remember much beyond the fact that I was running wild.” Recognition is the first step to rehabilitation.
And let’s hope Frank Warren can reach into his magician’s top hat and pull out an entertaining main event for the card—since he has refused to cancel or reschedule.