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June 2001
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A-FORCE OR A FARCE? Olympic super heavyweight champion Audley Harrison's long-awaited pro career kicked off with a quick win surrounded in controversy. GLYN LEACH reports |
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SOUTHPAW: hooks and crosses pounded Middleton into submission
- Get Big Pic Some fights just don’t warrant overdue taxing of the
brain matter at my stage in life. Nor do they inspire me to leave my TV set for
the arena (in this case Wembley, on 19 May) unless I can gain confirmation there
will be a press pass waiting for me. And the professional debut of Britain’s
Olympic super heavyweight champion from the Sydney Games qualified thus. We all knew
what would happen when the 6ft 5ins, 18st 8lbs (260lbs) of muscle that is Audley
Harrison — publicity prince and charisma king — was matched with American
Michael Middleton, a bloke who not even the hardcore had heard of. (Is he black,
white, Chinese?) What we had
at Wembley was an event, a belated homecoming-cum-coming out party for a hero
who would have punched for pay already had it not been for hand damage incurred
Down Under. This debut,
hardly unexpectedly, was not, repeat, not, a competitive athletic event. It was
fun time. And the career of the massive, sculpted Eastender looks as though it
could be a fun ride — for however long it lasts. Noted more
for his outstanding abilities as a self-publicist, aided and abetted by the
powerful Octagon Agency even before the Olympics, little was expected of
Harrison in Sydney. The perception was that if Harrison could fight as well as
he could talk, then way too many troops were used to retake the Falklands. Hand
of God or not, Mr Maradona, your arse would have been grass, there only to be
cut to bits by a Cockney lawnmower — on his lunchbreak. And clearly,
if you listened to Our Aud, he would have romped Desert Storm in a matter of
minutes, without the need for those insidiously brilliant but awful missiles
that turn left at traffic lights and disappear up drainpipes — consider
yourself lucky, Sadaam. But not only
did Harrison come home with the medal in the division that kicked off the career
of Lummox, sorry, Lennox Lewis at Seoul in 1988, he won over a nation with his
easy charm, effortless eloquence and frighteningly complete confidence in front
of the TV camera — the exact opposite of Lewis, in fact, and with a London
accent rather than a mid-Atlantic drawl. With Lewis,
we always hoped that a star would form. But we’re still waiting 13 years on.
The lack of natural warmth in his public persona never has dissipated. In Harrison,
a star was born and established in little more than 13 days, as long as it took
him to cruise through his Olympic prelim matches and then dominate the final. A
couple of TV interviews et voila. He returned
to Britain and a two-year TV contract with terrestrial network BBC1, who had the
sense to realise that here was a boxer that was not just worth covering, but who
had the potential to develop into a presenter with a little encouragement.
Stellar appearances on stalwart shows such as A Question of Sport only confirmed
the impression. All systems
were go for pro fight No.1. But then the “issues” arose. There’s nothing stellar
about what, in my opinion, was the catalogue of cock-ups surrounding this show
(one of which being, I was informed by super snapper John Gichigi, that I
didn’t even have a pass there, hence my watching it live on BBC1 like all but
5,500 of you — a good turnout for a debut, by any reckoning). Over six
million viewers tuned in, four times the amount of last year’s highest boxing
viewing figure. Hopefully they will not have been turned off by the tasteless
political bullshit that provided an unpleasant smelling backdrop to the big
man’s debut. I’d written
months ago that Harrison seemed incapable of putting a foot wrong, so sharp did
his dealings with the media and business fraternities seem. And, as usually is
the case, that situation proved too good to be true. The problems
started — or at least I became aware they were about to start — when I spoke
to genuine, pukka boxing writers Steve Bunce and Steve Lillis, via mobile as
they travelled by train to Hertfordshire (Frank Warren’s manor, for the
uninitiated), for a lunchtime press conference on the Thursday of fight week. “Warren’s
hijacked Middleton,” blurted Bunce in his usual understated manner once a
story has his blood up. “What?” “Warren’s
hijacked Middleton — I’ll call you later.” Of course,
Bunce being Bunce, he didn’t call. And me being me, I never expected him to
anyway. Not on
deadline at that stage, I figured I could wait until the morning and “read all
about it” in The Independent (still paying wonderfully rewarding rates, I
understand) and The Sport, lesser organs of my incredibly well-hung journalistic
compadres, who double as porn stars following the sad demise of John Holmes. Having
developed a moral objection to buying The Indy after one of its
I’m-so-far-up-my-own-arse-I-can-see-my-tonsils columnists rang BM’s office
and was incredibly rude to one of our staff, I photocopied Buncie’s report
from a copy in the local bagel shop. And found the article highly revealing. Clearly, not
everything about Harrison had turned professional and all was not as rosy as I
had once imagined, indeed hoped. Buncie’s
opening para set the scene perfectly: “Audley Harrison, his manager, Colin
McMillan, and his promoter, Jess Harding, were yesterday accused of trying to
deprive the American boxer Michael Middleton of as much as £50,000.” Reading on,
the Bunceman related a ridiculous situation whereby part of Middleton’s
British Boxing Board of Control contract for the fight had not been filled in
properly and resulted in the Florida journeyman becoming entitled to 21.25% of
the TV revenue rather than the paltry £3,500 he was originally offered. The Harrison
team’s attempt to diffuse the situation stretched so far as to offer Tampa
Private Dick Mike (and he ain’t so great in public, either) a couple of
hundred quid more. “They’ve
attempted to screw me,” claimed the American, who thinks better than he
fights. “It is that simple.” It certainly
seemed that way to me, too. Middleton
sought out the services of Andy Ayling, a young but vastly experienced Warren
cohort who could erase his growing physical likeness to Heinrich Himmler simply
by growing his hair a bit and buying a different pair of specs. (Note: Ayling
looking the spitter of Himmler does not reflect at all on his wonderful
employer, who, I must point out for reasons of legality, has absolutely no
similarities to a failed Austrian artist who had a penchant for opening highly
dubious shower complexes on the Polish border a few years ago and, at least in
conversation with myself, Warren has never spoken in terms of annexing the
Sudetenland, for all his ambition.) Suddenly, if
only through association with his manager and promoter, Our Audley was starting
to look like a bad guy. He was taking home a reputed £250,000 compared to
Middleton’s purse, which would hardly have bought the American a decent
holiday to recuperate from the beating he was hired to receive. Speaking of
Middleton’s contract, his newly acquired British lawyer, Bernard Clarke,
reportedly claimed: “It is a terrible document, the most one-sided contract I
have ever seen.” Advised by
the Warren axis, who I don’t blame one iota for this bit of tampering — here
I think of them like the Paul Whitehouse character in The Fast Show, the
“I’m a little bit whey, a little bit whoah, geezer” who you can’t leave
an opening for because he will capitalise on your mistake/stupidity. Basically,
it was so damned easy for the men from Herts to mess with this situation that
they simply couldn’t help themselves. In their
boots, I would have done it myself, if only through disappointment in former WBO
feather champ McMillan. As secretary of the Professional Boxer’s Association,
he should not, in my opinion, have been party to such shenanigans. I consider
his situation with the PBA to be severely compromised by all this. Middleton
immediately turned up the heat by sending in his £25 to join the PBA, thus
placing McMillan — who is quoted in the Bunce article as blaming Harding for
the contract cock-up — under further pressure. McMillan was now representing a
fighter he managed, Harrison, against a PBA member. Utterly ridiculous, totally
untenable and, I would have thought, exactly the sort of crap that the PBA was
set up to eradicate. Anyway, I’m
getting bored writing about this particular crap-laden aspect of the fight and
I’ve just heard on the radio that, very sadly, Courtney Love has had a
miscarriage and so, as a longtime admirer of Ms Love and her Hole (Kurt was just
a pussy), please allow me to move on. But first, a
word of advice for Audley, from a fellow Hackneyite — sort it, mate, this
emphatically cannot be allowed to happen again. However, something tells me that
if the A-Force is a fraction of the entity I believe him to be, he will already
have that one worked out. Nuff said. Come fight night, Mick the Dick, accompanied by Ayling and
Robbie Warren (brother of the magnificent Frank) waddled to the ring knowing
that he would now be paid around £35,000 — a nice, round $50,000. Middleton’s
music? Money for Nothing by Dire Gits, erm, Straits. A hollow victory for the
Harrison axis at best. Following
what I find to be one of those rather ineffectual British soul divas singing the
theme song to the thoroughly inaccurate Denzil Washington Hurricane movie, Our
Aud (who I have only heard one person refer to as Ainsley Herriot, the Frank
Bruno of British TV cookery), flanked by a brace of buff minders, entered the
Arena to massive approval. (Note to Mr
Harrison: Imagine what the reaction would have been like had the national anthem
been sung, and by Gabrielle, the only British diva who counts? At least
Gabby’s had a life to be “soulful” about — but Lord knows I’d never
wish that life on anyone.) The staredown
was a joke, simply because Audley had so far to stare down to make eye contact
with the (allegedly) 6ft tall, 16 stone (224lbs) visitor. Having
prepared in seclusion on Bodmin Moor, Cornwall, with thoughtfully hired trainer
Thel Torrence, one-time assistant to Eddie Futch in the Riddick Bowe team,
Harrison looked like a super heavyweight, the new breed of giants exemplified by
the likes of Bowe, Lewis and Michael Grant. This wasn’t
going to last long and it didn’t. Middleton, 33, was out of there in two
minutes, 45 seconds, left hanging on the ropes like a scarecrow caught on a
barbed wire fence (oh what an imaginative, evocative writer I am). Audley?
Can’t say too much. He moved well, has good handspeed, threw shots with good
form from out of his southpaw stance, kept a sensible distance that made me
wonder whether he’s worried about his chin. After all, Middleton’s contract
did include a rematch clause. So far we
know nothing more about Harrison other than he can do without the kind of
publicity that preceded his debut. But there’s
a long way to go and I’m tempted to say that things can only get better. At
29, he claims he doesn’t expect to be world champ until he’s 34. And if this
fight did nothing else for him, it set him on his way. But that’s about all. A case of
“watch this space”. |
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