BRILLIANT ARTICLE - read it: The Tragic Truth of Haye-Harrison

Fair enough, I see where you're coming from, and to be honest, I suspect you're a lot closer to the truth than me. I admit my judgment is probably clouded because I feel genuinely bad for the guy.

It's just that to me the whole build up was geared around the inevitable humiliation of a guy who was already a figure of national ridicule. It just had that feeling we're everyone is laughing with the simple kid, but he doesn't realise that the joke is actually on him. It's not a typical situation.

But, as you say, he's a fully grown man, a millionaire and he can make his own choices. It's just that he had to choose between his dignity and a heap of cash, because once he was in the fight he was never going to be capable of doing anything at all to salvage that dignity.

But that's the nature of the sport I suppose.

I understand how you mean that the script fits in such a way that it's entirely feasible to have been a fix, it's just that I don't personally think it was. For some reason when I say that it's automatically assumed that I'm defending David Haye, which is not the case at all. My reasoning of the fight not being fixed is actually that it was such a **** fight, such a missmatch both mentally and technically that there was no need to fix it. Why take the risk of fixing a fight against a inferior opponent that you could ko at any point? And if you're going to fix it, why not at least have the opponent punch a bit?

Haye knew he could finish Harrison at any point, but chose the third because he'd told his friends to bet on this round. This is the only real contentious issue for me. Is it legal? Certainly not if he bet on it himself, which he initially claimed to do. I have to admit I'm surprised that the BBBoC simply took his retraction as easily as they did.

From what I can gather if his family was to bet based on his prediction, then this is legal, but it's certainly open to debate whether or not it is fair.