Does anyone miss Audley Harrison?

Yes the way he beat Ali was spectacular.

 

Wilder because he wanted to rematch him for WBC title but that ain't possible now.

 

Can't say i do really, no

 

I've never aimed at him to be honest.

 

He was pretty hard to miss when he was still fighting.

 

Yes, TBH when I first started lurking these boards many years ago Audley was just being exposed as a fraud. I miss seeing so many posts about how he was a bum and had a glass chin.

 

It was funny seeing him laid out in hilarious fashion every now and then. Love him or hate him, his fights were usually fun to watch. He had some domestic classics with Sprott, Williams, Skelton and a few others. If he wasn't a con man who talked his way into big fights I wouldn't dislike him at all.

 

You're preaching to the choir man.

 

This is what seemed to anger everyone, and I just never understood it.

The guy signed a big-money TV deal after winning the gold medal, and it was like everyone expected him to fight for the world title right out of the gate.

When he faced the level of guys every new prospect who turns pro faces, people went nuts and turned on him.

The fans didn't pay for his contract. Why did it matter so much who he faced? That never made sense to me at all.

It always seemed like the television network who signed him and the boxing press in England just hated him for his contract. In the ring, he faced the usual suspects everyone fights and he knocked nearly all of them out.

I never had a problem with Audley Harrison. He was the first home-grown British fighter in decades who looked any good and they all just seemed to want to eviscerate him before he even fought in his pro debut. I never saw people turn on an athlete like that.

Who'd he kill? What crimes did he commit? How many prison terms was he sentenced to?

None? He just won the gold medal for his country and signed a big money TV deal ... so everyone HATED him?

It was like they had cheered for losers for so long, when they had a winner on their hands, they had to destroy him. And then when their winner became a loser, they relished it. So bizarre.

A decade later, Anthony Joshua comes along, and he's loved. And he fought the same calibre of fighters in his first 10 or 12 fights that Harrison did.

It was truly odd.

 

You've made some fairly controversial, nay, outrageous claims during the time I've been following ESB MVC!, but surely this is taking it too far!

 

...with the BBC; who paid for it then?

 

great amateur