THIS time there will be no flashing lights, no loud music, very few people watching and, what’s more, he had better be in the ring on time. Audley Harrison . . . welcome to the undercard.

Britain’s Olympic super-heavyweight champion is used to being the main attraction and he has also become used to getting stick. At times, the only evidence of Harrison being a hungry fighter was his ballooning weight, while the BBC, which is paying him £1 million to show his first ten bouts as a professional, has been left red-faced by his obsession with control, leading to poor-quality opponents and delays in live broadcasts as Harrison makes his entrance.

None of the 15,000 spectators at the Boardwalk Hall, Atlantic City, tonight for Harrison’s American debut will care about any of that. After all, they will not be there to watch him. Tickets for the card were sold out before it had been announced that Harrison was boxing, the result of a massive demand to see the light-welterweight rematch between Micky Ward and Arturo Gatti, expected to be an old-fashioned, blood-and-guts slugfest. In the build-up, the pair were pictured on the cover of The Ring magazine holding baseball bats.

Harrison, though, is not about to let himself be cast as a fool. “I’m going to have the last laugh,” he said. “People keep taking free punches at me, but I’m no smiling buffoon.”

Harrison’s latest success, a two-round knockout of Wade Lewis, showed he is going the right way and he looks certain to continue his winning streak against Shawn Robinson. Despite a respectable record of 15 wins and four losses, Robinson has not won in more than a year, a spell that includes a two-round knockout by Danny Williams, the British and Commonwealth champion.

Johnny Nelson is a man who has spent a decade trying to overcome bad publicity. But the WBO cruiserweight champion, who makes the tenth defence of his title against Guillermo Jones, of Panama, at the Storm Arena, Derby, tonight, is content with his lot in life.

Always considered a defensive boxer, Nelson’s darkest hour came nearly 13 years ago when he challenged Carlos DeLeon for the WBC version of the title. Nelson tried to sneak a victory without mixing it against a proud champion. DeLeon retained his title with a draw and Nelson was universally vilified.

“Life changed for me after that,” Nelson said. “I realised how fickle and horrible people could be. If I was walking into a restaurant, people would deliberately stand in my way or think they could take me on.”

His attitude changed inside the ropes, too, and, whisper it quietly, he has developed into a destructive puncher, stopping six of his ten opponents for this title inside eight rounds. “If people want to think I am the same fighter who fought DeLeon, that’s fine by me. If they come at me, expecting me to back off, they will walk straight into a punch and the fight will be over.”

The big time is just around the corner for Vitali Klitschko, who has been told that victory against Larry Donald, of the US, in Dortmund tonight will set up a March 8 match against Lennox Lewis for the WBC heavyweight title. The elder of the Ukrainian brothers, Klitschko, 31, is due to be the first of three opponents for Lewis next year, along with Mike Tyson and the younger Klitschko, Wladimir, the WBO champion.

LINKS

TELEVISION: Live: Nelson v Jones, live on Sky Sports 1 tonight, 8.30pm-10.30pm. Harrison v Robinson and Ward v Gatti, BBC Two tomorrow, 2.45pm-4.15pm.