Fight week had come to Las Vegas and there was a buzz as Joe Calzaghe danced around a ring in Planet Hollywood. Fans took pictures and begged for autographs. “Wales’s great undefeated champion fighting for the light-heavyweight crown,” the public announcer proclaimed, to raucous cheers. And then she went and ruined it by mentioning Audinary.

Audley Harrison also boxes on the card in Las Vegas on Saturday night, but if announcing the fact was intended to start a stampede, it was never going to be towards the ticket office. The chanting for Calzaghe turned to audible groans. Not Fraudley.

It is amazing to think that there was a time, not so long ago, when Harrison eclipsed Calzaghe for recognition. He was the main event, the one with the BBC contract, the prime-time audience.

Olympic gold is precious currency in British boxing and Harrison had his hands on the stuff. No wonder Calzaghe occasionally wonders if things might have been different had he been allowed to go to the Olympics. Would he have spent all those years in the shadows? Would he have faced such a long, hard fight for public acclaim?

Expecting to be called up for Great Britain at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992, Calzaghe was passed over by the Welsh Amateur Boxing Association, which believed that, for all his talent, he had not pulled his weight for his country. “Imagine if I’d won the gold medal, who knows what would have happened?” he said.

“Audley Harrison won the Olympic gold medal in 2000 and signed a big fat £1 million deal with the BBC. Amir Khan came back with a silver from Athens and immediately became one of the biggest commodities in British sport. I could have had the platform to be a superstar, but that’s not the way it was to be, all because of a few men in a pub. That’s how it is in boxing. Your destiny is in the hands of other people.”

Talent will out in the end, even from the organisational chaos of boxing. Now Calzaghe finds himself top of the bill for his bout against Bernard Hopkins while Harrison makes up the undercard. On Tuesday, Harrison did not even know his opponent. Turns out to be a guy called Jason Barnett from Florida.

At 36, it is hard to believe that Harrison will be any better than the same deeply flawed fighter, the one disinclined to violence, who was knocked out cold by Michael Sprott in his last bout, at Wembley Arena 14 months ago.

If there is a difference, it is that this comeback is being managed by Frank Warren, the powerful promoter, who used to deride Harrison in print as the BBC bouts brought embarrassment both for the boxer and the corporation.

Now Warren is hoping that three quick victories can rehabilitate Harrison in the eyes of the public and lead to a sell-out in London against David Haye. “I’ve been his biggest critic,” Warren said yesterday. “But he wrote to me. It is personal what was in the letter, but I thought here’s a guy who wants to prove himself. I know what it is like to be down, I know what it is like to be kicked. I’ll provide the opportunity and then it is up to him to deliver.”

A resident of Las Vegas for the past few years, Harrison endured a terrible 12 months without even stepping into the ring. He injured his shoulder in a car crash and lost a brother, Vincent, to a brain haemorrhage.

This week he proclaimed modestly that he was going to become heavyweight champion and then the world’s leading promoter. “I’m down in the valley looking up at the mountain,” he said. “I’m ready to climb.” In everyone else’s mind, Harrison’s career peaked way back in Sydney in 2000, when a gold medal was hung around his neck.

Calzaghe was deprived of that honour and, for all his frustration, he has wondered whether being snubbed was entirely a bad thing. “I might have become a millionaire before I fought anybody who was good,” he reflected in his autobiography. “I might have changed. I had to fight my way to the top, and I did it the hard way.”

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