PERSONALITY CRISIS

Imagine this: you win a version of the light-welterweight championship, but, instead of reaping the benefits, you spend two years defending your title in non-televised bouts.

Then imagine this: you have an opportunity to fight Ricky Hatton, one of the hottest names in your weight class. Many in the boxing business think you have the skills to win. It will be the most important fight of your career. Then you pull out of the fight because you feel Hatton’s camp has disrespected you.

The fighter in both scenarios is Vivian Harris, current WBA light-welterweight king.

“Nobody wants to take a chance and fight me,” says Harris. “Floyd Mayweather was supposed to be my WBA mandatory. He chose to fight someone else. Miguel Cotto was supposed to fight me last spring. He fought Kelson Pinto for Zab Judah’s old [WBO] title. I don’t want to say these guys are afraid of me, but I’m being ignored.”

It certainly looks that way. Perhaps people keep their distance because of the wicked right hand Harris used to knock out Diosbelys Hurtado for the title, or the way he flattened Oktay Urkal in Berlin last October. Perhaps it’s Harris’s height - at 5ft 91/2ins, he towers over most of his rivals. But the main reason Harris can’t score a big-money fight is the fact that nobody knows who he is. In boxing, the big names want to face each other only for maximum paydays, and Harris hasn’t earned his stripes in terms of being a marquee attraction.

But it’s not as if Harris isn’t taking what he sees as the right steps to change that situation. He recently swapped management from Shelly Finkel to Emanuel Steward.

“Emanuel is the sort of fellow everyone likes,” says Showtime analyst Al Bernstein. “He has a great reputation and will no doubt open some doors for Harris.”

But some people think Harris, 25-1-1 (17 quick wins) has seriously hampered his career with his attitude. He can bristle with the best of them.

One of the people who subscribes to that viewpoint is Carl Moretti of Main Events, Harris’s promoters.

“Harris had an opportunity to fight Ricky Hatton last fall [autumn]. This was going to be his big chance, but all he did was complain about the money. We told him, even if you don’t like the offer, go over to England and knock him out. Because Hatton is made for Harris. Once the bell rang, there was nothing Hatton could do to keep Harris off of him. But Harris was obsessed with making more money than Hatton and he ended up losing the opportunity. He’ll regret it. And now Hatton never has to fight Harris. He can say the offer was made and Harris turned it down.

“If Harris is unhappy with where he is, it’s partly his own doing.”

If Harris’s reasoning is difficult to follow, it could be because there are two of him. One is the quiet, softly spoken version of Vivian who believes God will eventually shine a light on his career. The other is “Vicious” Vivian, a foul-mouthed young man known for his shifting loyalties and mysterious disappearing acts.

“People ask me if he’s difficult,” says Steward, “but he’s been a sweetheart.”

You wouldn’t know it by the profanity-laced tirades Harris spewed out for weeks after the Hatton fight collapsed. But was money, as Harris maintained, the only problem?

“The newspapers and the internet made it sound like it was only about the money, but there was much, much more to it,” says Steward. For one thing, Steward saw Hatton as a difficult opponent. That concerned him, especially if the fight were to take place in Manchester.

“I remember my time in England when I was with Prince Hamed. There are lots of rough characters there and they have a way of making sure their fighter wins.”

Is Steward suggesting the Brits don’t maintain a level playing field?

“It’s like that all over the world,” Steward says. He used the Harris-Urkal fight as an example. A rematch of an April encounter won by Harris, the encounter was held in Berlin’s Tempodrom Arena in a location Steward describes as Urkal’s “neighbourhood”.

Urkal is Turkish. By Steward’s calculation, nine-tenths of the ticket buyers were Turkish. The veteran trainer worried that Urkal’s vocal following would sway the judges’ scoring. So he instructed Harris to ratchet up the activity in the late rounds.

Harris did so and then some.

Exhausted from jet lag, Harris knocked Urkal out with a right uppercut that left the challenger face down on the canvas.

Still, bringing Harris to England to fight Hatton didn’t appeal to Steward. He wanted the fight in Detroit, his own backyard. It was a decision Carl Moretti still berates.

“That just showed Emanuel and Vivian being naive. Hatton was the draw, but he wouldn’t draw in Detroit. Neither would Harris.”

Hatton told a Manchester newspaper during the height of the controversy: “Harris is an absolute plonker and I’m gutted. I can only come to one conclusion. He’s scared.”

According to Steward, however, the 26-year-old Harris was also dealing with complex personal issues.

“Ricky Hatton approached me and asked if the fight was going to happen. I told him the time just wasn’t right. See, Harris was fighting with management, promoters, everybody. His life was in turmoil and his head wouldn’t be in the fight.”

So what exactly was happening? Harris won’t go into detail but one person affected by Harris’s secretive ways was his former trainer, Lennox Blackmoore.

“I trained him since he was 17,” says Blackmoore from Gleason’s Gym in New York. “We were close. Then suddenly he just disappeared. He didn’t say goodbye. He changed his phone number and was gone.”

Blackmoore, a noted Guyanese fighter of the 1970s, had guided Harris through most of his professional career. In February 2004, Harris pulled his vanishing act. At the time, there were rumours of Harris being shot at by thugs in his neighbourhood. More recently, Blackmoore added to the story.

“He wanted to cut my salary,” he says. “I told him I wouldn’t stand for that. So he just left. It’s a mystery to me.”

Blackmoore says he’s through with Harris.

Did Harris want to cut into Blackmoore’s salary to pay off some street debts? Or was he, as he has insisted, merely looking for a change of scenery? Whatever the reason, Harris, along with his fiancée and their two children, vanished from New York and resurfaced in Florida.

With his father acting as trainer, Harris fought Urkal in April and won by majority decision. He then spent much of 2004 bickering with Main Events over the attention they gave to their other fighters, such as Arturo Gatti, Juan Diaz and Rocky Juarez.

Harris yearned for a big-money fight, but when his then-manager, Shelly Finkel, planned a rematch with Urkal, Harris was outraged. It was around this time that Harris’s father suggested Vivian seek help elsewhere.

Steward wasn’t interested at first.

“I thought he was a good fighter but nothing exceptional. Then he told me he was already a champion. I had no idea.”

Steward changed his tune when he realised Harris possessed the WBA belt. Soon the Kronk Gym issued a newsletter heralding Steward’s newest attraction. The fighter Steward thought was unexceptional was now billed by Steward’s PR team as being another Marvin Hagler.

It doesn’t take a cynic to read Steward’s thinking - even if Harris was not exceptional, he owned a title belt in one of boxing’s most lucrative divisions. Steward insisted he also act as Harris’s manager as well as trainer. Harris was amenable.

Born 17 June 1978 in Georgetown, Guyana, Vivian was one of 17 children born to Herman Harris, a Guyanese boxing promoter and former amateur fighter. Vivian’s brother, Wayne Harris, was a journeyman middle who once fought Reggie Johnson for the WBA title.

It was under Wayne’s influence that Vivian took up boxing. At 15, Harris moved to Brooklyn, where his mother lived. He found his way to the Bed-Stuy Boxing Center. There he met Blackmoore and went on to win the New York Golden Gloves. He turned pro in 1997.

Harris wasn’t exactly on the fast track to success. He could be commanding in the ring, but he also allowed lesser fighters to outwork him. In his 17th pro fight, he lost on points to slick Ray Oliveira. His next fight was a controversial draw with Ivan Robinson.

Near the end of 2000, muggers attacked Harris near his home and stabbed him in the stomach over a piece of jewellery. After a brief hospital stay, Harris continued his topsy-turvy career, culminating with his savage two-round knockout of Hurtado for the WBA title.

After the rematch with Urkal, Steward met with HBO to pitch the idea of a Harris-Mayweather bout. Steward felt the tall, rangy Harris would have an easy time with the smaller, light-hitting Mayweather.

“The main thing Harris has going for himself is that people will underestimate him,” says the optimistic Steward. HBO rejected the idea.

Harris and Steward then travelled to Arizona, where they sat ringside for the Kostya Tszyu-Sharmba Mitchell fight. After Tszyu steamrollered Mitchell in three rounds, Steward and Harris climbed into the ring to congratulate him. It was a ploy going back to the days of John L. Sullivan — arrive at the champion’s victory party and issue a challenge. It made for a nice photo opportunity, but Tszyu is the major player at 10st and, aged 35, will be aiming for a couple of big fights at most before retiring.

In December, Harris and Steward showed up in Las Vegas to challenge Miguel Cotto, who was defending his WBO strap against Randall Bailey. Harris even considered visiting England to watch the Hatton-Ray Oliveira fight.

“I am willing to give either one of them a shot at my belt in 2005. That’s why I am going to the fights — to let them personally know, to look them in the eyes and say ‘let’s get it on’,” says Harris.

To Harris’s credit, he’s trying to make himself visible. But, unless he realises his WBA strap doesn’t carry as much clout as he’d like to think, and with Tszyu set to defend against Hatton in June, Harris may end up back in the shadows.