By James Slater: Still a fighter who gains attention even though he has not set his size 17 feet in the ring for the past 15 months or so, 40-year-old Audley Harrison is currently getting ready to give it one more go. Set to face little-known former “Prizefighter” participant Ali Adams in April, “A-Force” has officially gone on record as saying he will retire from the sport if he loses to the 30-year-old with the 13-3-1(5) pro record.
Doubtless many fans will say good riddance if this turns out to be the case, but the truth is, Audley is a genuine “love to hate” figure; a fighter who always gets an audience when he fights (or dances, as his recent highly-watched stint on Strictly Come Dancing proved) – and, admit it or not, but Harrison will be missed when he does go. Harrison says, in an interview with U.K tabloid The Sun, that he wants to “find out if he can still be the guy who had a 19-0 record at one point.”
Confessing he knows next to nothing about Iraq-born Adams, Harrison, 27-5(20) is nevertheless grateful at the opportunity the young fighter is giving him. The tall, athletic southpaw who captured Olympic gold all those years ago (2000) says he also “wants to see if I can still dedicate myself to boxing and fight three times this year.” The plan, Harrison says, is to beat Adams, then have a fight with someone like a Tyson Fury (who has already turned down a fight with Harrison, his promoter saying Fury would gain nothing from beating him up) or a David Price; and then “have a showdown with one of the top names by the end of the year.”
That’s quite an ambitious plan for a fighter who famously threw just one solitary punch against defending WBA heavyweight champ David Haye in his last fight (the punch being a jab). For what it’s worth, I think Harrison will make Adams eat his 4th-round KO prediction by beating him by fairly wide decision – but will the rest of Harrison’s plan come off the way he hopes it will? If Audley, who froze against Haye, did manage to get red-hot contender Price into the ring with him, what are the chances he’d freeze again before being taken out?
Harrison, as fans well know, has “the skills to pay the bills,” but he has never been and he never will be a genuine fighting man with heart, passion and desire (barring his rematch win over Michael Sprott, where a one-armed Harrison did dig deep) . This hasn’t stopped the big man from becoming a household name, however, and it won’t stop a big audience from watching his next fight. The Audley Harrison story is not quite done yet!