Harrison insults the public's intelligence

Audley Harrison and his sponsor, the BBC, should carefully note last week's refusal by the American TV company, Home Box Office, to countenance Naseem Hamed's plan to return to the ring against a knock-over Spanish opponent.

HBO, heaven knows, gave Naseem plenty of rope all the way to his fearsome beating by the Mexican Marco Antonio Barrera in Las Vegas earlier this year. But then it was spelled out. The posturing, the jiggling, dry-ice ring entrances, no longer had any credence. The time had come for Naseem to fight the real fighters.

Harrison, the Olympic champion, is still in the early stages of his professional career, but in the year since he won in Sydney his two "top-of-the-bill" fights have been an assault on any serious belief that he is grooming himself to be a world champion. No one expected him to step in with Lennox Lewis or Mike Tyson, but both those undisputed world champions busied themselves against a gradually ascending quality of opposition when they came into the professional game. Harrison, on the other hand, has done nothing more than insult the intelligence of the public. At least Naseem provided a show before moving, however briefly, into the real business.