By Terence Dooley
In the book ‘One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest’ there is a scene in which a group of mental patients gather together for what is supposed to be a mutually beneficial group therapy session, it instead becomes what is known in farming circles as a pecking frenzy. As the designated inmate is encouraged to reveal his hopes and neuroses’ the rest of the group jump on him and completely emasculate the character. At its end the character is left destroyed before his peers and fellow patients.
It is named a pecking frenzy after the phenomenon that occurs when a collection of birds are cooped-up together. A speck of dirt, or blood, on one chicken can be mistaken for a bug or a bit of food so the other birds begin to peck away until the initial bird is bleeding and spreading his own blood. Other birds get soaked in the blood and they in turn are pecked, eventually, left unchecked, the feeding frenzy can result in a full coop of dead birds.
I am not babbling unnecessarily. These thoughts were brought to my mind, as Audley Harrison lay on the canvas on Saturday night as his deserving victor, the likeable Michael Sprott (who, by the way, fought very astutely in the second and third rounds) jumped around the ring in jubilation.
We all saw Harrison starched by a winging left hook and it was perfectly fair for Sprott to be jubilant. Most of you who saw Audley hammered to the canvas would have echoed the cheer of the audience that night - Harrison has not been the most modest of fighters - yet his downfall reveals a lot about the man himself as well as casting a disturbing light over the fans who continued the booing of Audley as he regained his feet and his senses.
Audley probably would have preferred to remain prostrate rather than getting up to the cacophony of jeers, thankfully, for those booing, he was Ok. As Audley lay prostrate on the canvas, his dream in tatters, he was blissfully unawares of the unsavoury scenes unfolding in the ring and on PC's around the country as jubilation met his knockout defeat and the told you so’s began in earnest in a way that was perhaps magnified by the information age and the distance it provides us.
The fight was interesting on many levels, the first is for the telling fact that it calls into question the famous fairness of British fans, in denying Audley even a smattering of applause (or failing that, given his past attitude which I do not condone, a wall of silence) the fans refused to grant him the common courtesy we even extend to stricken foreign fighters, whom we, of course, boo pitilessly pre-fight only to extend some human deference if our guy sparks them out.
You may agree with Matt Skelton and say that Audley has bad-mouthed other fighters yet other fighters do this and are offered a chance or two. Harrison’s namesake, Scott, has sometimes seemed churlish towards his foes plus is a danger to himself, the police and the public every time he steps out of the pub door (Audley, if he ever fights again, is only a danger to himself) yet his crimes were, initially, met with claims that he deserved our understanding and support, he has an illness after all.
As a crowd of people prepare to get misty-eyed for a man, Gerald McClellan, who, bluntly, was a poor human being in terms of his attitude towards animals, and it must be said other people, we have to ask where this leaves Audley, the braggart, on the radar of our sympathy.
Harrison is unique in that he has mouthed-off a lot in the past and earned the ire of boxing fans to the extent that he could have been lying on the canvas struggling for his life rather than struggling to regain his senses as the fans awaited their chance to boo the guy. Injury is a possibility haunting all KO’s and traditionally results in a cathartic cheer for the fighter when he does get up.
Audley did not get this cheer because he is mouthy, well despite the long-history of wall-flowers in boxing this is a minor distraction and one easily rectified, fans could have turned-off his interviews and ignored articles about him years ago. If someone is loud and annoying isolate yourself from them and the job is a good one, the booing of Harrison as he rose was crass.
Frankly this is poor, poor behaviour from fans who on the one hand want to be recognised as compassionate yet on the other hand had called for Audley to be knocked-out after the first Williams fight (some Sprott fans were naturally jubilant yet an awful lot of people just wanted somebody, anybody, to knock Harrison out pre-fight).
Harrison demarcated himself as a stand-alone man; he wanted to go it unaccompanied and his seclusion proves that boxing is a closed-circle. You are either one of the lads or standing on the sidelines paying your dues and hitting the bags without ever being welcomed into the inner-circle.
Audley was braggadocios, many fighters are, he failed to prove it in the ring, many fighters do this also yet there is a quietly distasteful aspect to the glee surrounding his decline. Audley never inspired ambivalence but the venom directed at him has been quite shocking, proving the old adage (the one I just now made-up) that hate and disdain move us to write/speak far more than admiration and affection do.
Audley always had an uphill battle with the British public, Amir Khan, a personable guy, is currently being accused of arrogance and the British mindset towards confidence can be echoed by the cry of “what the fook are you looking at pal!?” that can greet you if you look someone in the eye down the pub.
So now Audley looks done and fans, like myself, of the fighter and man must fess-up and admit that we got caught-up in the Audley hype machine and got it all wrong.
Audley was not a nice guy but to be fair his much-maligned autobiography showed us a man who had taken a wrong path for a long time only to find a way out of the banality of daily life through boxing. From prison to the Olympics is a story pertinent when one considers the Tek-9 wielding youngsters out there waiting to shoot us all down, if those kids carried a copy of Audley’s tome rather than a weapon they may have learned a few things from a former peer.
So where did it go wrong for Audley?
Well I think it is all down to his legs. Again you may need to bear with me here.
Against Sprott Audley seemed to have an impressive upper-body carried by spindly legs, like a Martian killing machine, without the killer instinct. Perhaps this is a good way of looking at his career; his legs/early career never quite carried the weight of his ambition to the levels his talent hinted at.
Audley seemed intent on doing his things his own way, he dreamed of managing and promoting himself to a world-title and this is a fine dream, a number of fighters have taken control of their own careers yet they do this from the top, they do it from a position of strength.
Lennox Lewis was notable for his appreciation of his own skills as well as, eventually, taking full control of his own career yet Lewis did it from a position, eventually gained, as the premier heavyweight of his generation. Audley seemed to aspire to this level of autonomy far too soon and one was always given the impression that Harrison felt Lewis was his spiritual boxing forefather. Even on Saturday night Harrison entered the ring to ‘Crazy Baldheads’ a Bob Marley tune often used by Lewis yet Audley did not have that serene confidence Lewis brought to the ring.
Audley did things his own way throughout his career. He alienated some, Frank Warren notably, by insisting on funnelling his own vocation in his own direction, he worked out his own deal with the BBC from the outset and then made the error of carrying his own shows and fighting undercard fights at the top of each bill.
The die was cast in many ways as Audley came out for his first fight, a blow-out win over Mike Middleton, grossly overweight and out of shape. The fight was ridiculed as well as being overshadowed by Audley having to engage in pre-fight wrangling over his opponents’ purse.
Public opinion turns like a jack-knifing truck, slowly yet irrevocably, and Harrison set aside another nail for his coffin whilst struggling in his second pro fight against the journeyman Derek McCafferty. The most interesting thing about this fight was Audley’s haircut, a wild Afro, and, as he entered the ring, a sign of the ridicule to come greeted him with as a cry of “Come on Shaft!” went up.
However, despite his out of the ring demeanour lacking an element of class – culminating in his tasteless public taunting of Herbie Hide later down the line, taunting that resulted in a riot – Audley did show some hunger by fighting his third fight the next month and this is where I jumped on the bandwagon.
Piotr Jurczyk was a poor foe yet in finishing the fight with a body-shot Audley showed a nice dip and turn that belied his great height and bulk, it was a small piece of sublime skill and it boded well for his future as long as he kept busy, fit and amended his claim that he would wipe the floor with the UK in his first five fights. A false claim as he had only taken on a single British fighter in three fights thus far.
Again a crack was revealed in retrospect, he wanted to conquer the States – US trainer, the odd US fight mixed in – without eating what was on his plate. He should have lived and breathed the British scene from the start, these were the guys he would need to firstly get past so why look beyond them? It was a crazy career trajectory.
Audley’s career carried on in a staccato fashion, he had Bryan Robson injuries without the pedigree and it took a while before he finally showed us all something against Richel Hersisia. Harrison could stay tight, block shots and then explode with combinations that spoke of some variety and no small amount of imagination.
Throughout all this, the massive dips and minute highs Audley was confidently proclaiming that he was the real deal; we should get behind him and enjoy the world-titles. Just like those spindle legs holding his body his early career provided no kind of logical progression towards becoming a rounded fighter. In his mind the Olympic win, in virtually a different sport from high-level pro boxing, was his underpinning, the rest was destiny, he saw the glory of Lewis’ later years yet did not see, or ignored, the graft Lewis went through to get to the top.
Lewis went the orthodox route – British, European and Commonwealth – whereas Harrison, a southpaw, showed no logic in his pursuit of titles to the extent that this his most recent fight saw exhibiting a 21-3 (16) record and fighting for the EU non-title and the English title.
Simply put Audley walked that thin line between arrogance and confidence and fell off it. Lennox Lewis, Muhammad Ali and James Toney all are arrogant men, they got/get away with it though because they have talent and guts, Audley had the talent but did not fortify it with something more tangible that he could use in the boxing ring when times where hard and men like Sprott were blocking his shots and firing back.
A weak chin is no walk in the park, nor is it a disaster zone in Beirut; US cousins will tell us that Lennox Lewis had a china chin yet luckily for him he fortified it with a ramming jab, strength in clinches and imaginative punching mixed with no small amount of power.
Audley left his own chin out to dry behind a prodding jab and noncommittal work on the inside.
One also suspects that Audley spent considerable time in training working on getting that, occasionally, chiselled upper-body look yet he did not go out running in the morning to get the tree-trunk legs required. He had legs that could barely support his upper body and left him a lumbering target with a dodgy chin, again for this in-ring analogy read his insistence on acting like a world-champion whilst still a novice fighter.
He had the look but not the lock and is now a busted flush in boxing, I for one will still follow his career with interest, he has provided some enjoyable moments of skill so I will keep my eyes peeled for them, plus I like the guy, but in the hard light of day there is little Audley can expect for himself from boxing.
Worryingly he has burned so many bridges you cannot see him gracing the retirement after-dinner circuit nor will he be able to seriously train fighters, he could not get himself fit so how can he get others ready?
It is a shame to see Audley fall so badly, to be booed to his feet in that way, and his story has the feel of a Shakespearean, not Greek, tragedy, outside forces or revelations did not leave him undone, he did for himself due to a fatal flaw – a Lennox Lewis style arrogance without the steely-eyed desire Lewis brought to boxing.
Hopefully Harrison can provide a living for himself and his family and whatever he does next he should think long and hard about the talent he has squandered, initially, and damagingly, celebrity got in the way but he had years to be a celebrity post-boxing. A notoriety that could have been based on a long professional body of work rather than a forgotten amateur win, and, it must be said, a fleeting celebrity life on the Beeb.
