By Terence Dooley

The nature of Audley Harrison's third round KO defeat to WBA heavyweight title-holder David Haye will be examined by the BBBoC later today.  The board will decide if Harrison, who threw a handful of shots and landed a couple of jabs during the contest, should be paid in full for his night's work or punished for not putting up enough of a fight.

Audley is said to have earned £1.5 million for the contest, with many fans claiming that his record of choking in big fights, coupled with a negative fighting style, set the scene for a poor night of PPV boxing. 

The BBBoC have the power to withhold a percentage of Harrison's purse should they decide that he did not put enough effort into the fight.  Harrison, though, claims that his strategy was to take Haye past the mid-rounds before putting his own tactical battle plan into action. 

The 27-5 (20) southpaw is no stranger to controversy; he froze during his 2005 defeat to Danny Williams and took an age to get going in his next contest, a 2006 points reverse to the heavily devalued Dominick Guinn.  Throw in tepid displays against George Arias and Julius Francis and a clear pattern emerges; Audley is, to put it kindly, a thinker, and the BBBoC can hardly argue that his anodyne performance was a huge shock to the system.

Punishing a fighter for failing to perform in a big fight when he has a history of failing to perform in big fights smacks of locking the stable door after the horse has bolted.  The board sanctioned the fight, both men trained for the contest and Audley fought like Audley, taking action at this point won't remove the stench left by the contest, nor will it return the £15 that many fans paid for this PPV contest.  Best to let slumbering heavies lie.

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