By Lee Collier
Dean Harrison returns to action next month and is looking to rebuild his promising career after a disappointing 2009. The 26-year-old Wolverhampton fighter stepped up to fight Paul McCloskey for the British light-welterweight title last March and was stopped in four rounds. Harrison won his comeback fight against Ali Wyatt before losing to the Joe Pennington-trained southpaw Darren Askew in November.
Harrison starts his road to recovery when facing Ben Lawler in a Midlands Area light-welterweight title on the 14th of March at the Civic Hall in Harrison’s hometown; this will be Lawler’s first defence of the title. Harrison is currently in America preparing for Lawler with new trainer Lee Beard; Dean caught up with BoxingScene.com to speak about the past year and his upcoming title fight.
“I don’t know much about him [Lawler] but I know Lee has been watching footage of him so with sparring starting this week we’ll come up with a game plan soon,” stated Harrison. “I know he won the Midland title by stoppage so he won’t give up his title easily. It will be a really tough fight.”
“If everything goes right in this title fight I will be looking to get a rematch with Askew. I shouldn’t have really lost that fight but I had a lot of personal problems and weight issues. I shouldn’t have taken the fight but you live and learn. If I lose my next couple of fights I’ll quit,” he explained.
Harrison was stopped in three rounds by Askew in a fight that Harrison was expected to win. The fighter explained what went wrong on the night. “Darren is a southpaw and I had no southpaw sparring, no specific southpaw training or gameplan for him. I went in reckless and tried to brawl him and I’m a boxer not a brawler. Everything was wrong and I usually have a good chin. I got caught in the first, went down, and wondered what was going on,” recalled Harrison.
“I carried on and won the round, and then I won the second and was winning the third but got caught and went down again. I thought something was wrong as I usually spar big punchers and never go down. Darren is not the biggest of punchers but I was just going down for no reason but he had the perfect fight and fair play to him. I am looking for a rematch with him before getting back to major title fights.”
Harrison lost to current European king Paul McCloskey in a British title fight in March, before that the boxer was unlucky when he losing an English title fight to Scott Haywood by the narrowest of margins, 96-95 on Howard Foster’s scorecard. The 15-3 (4) fighter has different opinions on both of his title losses.
“The Scott Haywood fight I took at five day’s notice and I won that fight easily by at least three rounds,” claimed Harrison. “Not a single person I have spoken to thought I lost that fight. With the Paul McCloskey fight I took it at nine day’s notice and had to lose a lot of weight in a short time.”
“Even if I would have had six week’s notice with McCloskey I wouldn’t have won at that time of my career. I see McCloskey as world class,” explains Harrison. “I just couldn’t turn down a British title shot even though looking back I wasn’t in a position to win.”
Harrison switched gyms, relocating his training to Hyde and, more recently, travelling to America to train under the tutelage of Lee Beard; Harrison is feeling the benefit of the move already. “The training is going quite well at the minute. The kind of training I am doing up here is something I’ve never done before so I should be the fittest I have ever been,” declared Harrison.
“I do an hour on the pads with Lee every day, which is something I have never had before, and I can see my defence getting better. I am feeling fitter than I ever have. If I get 4-6 week’s notice then we can get a game plan sorted and I feel I can step back up to British title level. 2010 will be a good year for me.”
