Like DeGale and Groves, David Haye and Audley Harrison knew each other well in the amateurs. But these two were good friends... once!
David Haye and Audley Harrison were once friends. The best of friends. By the time they met for the world heavyweight title they were, as the fight was dubbed, Best of Enemies.
This was a personal difference that could be settled professionally, in the same way James DeGale and George Groves will both try to do on May 21st. Only there is one fundamental difference: Haye and Harrison at one time, liked each other. A lot.
A decade ago, Audley Harrison was the darling of the sport here. He had won Olympic gold in Sydney and was a fixture in the Great Britain amateur set-up, the senior fighter many of the new faces could look up to - usually literally. One of those new faces did just that and belonged to a brash boy from Bermondsey, David Haye.
Haye, by his own admission was a fan of Audley and Audley took him under his wing, happy to take on the big brother mentor. The pair shared rooms, crashed on each other's floors and according to some inside the camp, were inseparable. While Harrison was making history at the Olympics, Haye was winning silver in the amateur world championships.
When Harrison turned pro in a blaze of publicity, his young friend believed the hype as much as anyone. He had pinned his colours to Audley's mast. Even when his mate faltered, his support and belief was unflinching; he would win a cruiserweight world title and Harrison would do the same at heavyweight.
But all that changed in the ring, in 2006. Not in a professional ring where Harrison had lost to Danny Williams in the first real test of his credentials or where Haye had been suckered by Carl Thompson into his first loss as a paid fighter, but in a gym in Miami.
Friendship
Harrison had headed to the States to rebuild after back-to-back losses and had turned to Lennox Lewis, another Olympic gold medalist. He would work out in front of Lennox, pick up the odd tip here as he battled to resurrect a career in which he had promised so much, usually with his mouth. That day, a young David Haye was in the same gym and as he often did, Audley invited him to spar under Lewis' gaze.
Sensing a chance to impress the daddy of British boxing, Haye went for it. No holds barred, no thought for friendship and, as folklore has it, got the better of his mentor. Lewis would later play down the session but Harrison felt humiliated by his young friend's behaviour, adamant that he had taken liberties because of who was watching.
It signalled the end of their friendship. Haye headed back to England - he remains a regular visitor to Miami for his pre-camp preparations - and Harrison stayed in the States. Back then it was just another friendship that had fallen by the wayside, something that happens in everyday life, never mind in the individualistic, intense world of a professional boxer.
But then, four years on, the pair were reunited. Haye was looking for an opponent for the third defence of his WBA world title, Harrison had somehow stumbled out of the last-chance saloon with his career still in tact, thanks to a Prizefighter win and a stunning last-minute knockout to snatch the European belt from Michael Sprott's grasp.
The very next day he began calling out Haye but even then, it was dismissed the latest in a long line of fantasies from Harrison, who despite all the glaring evidence against him, maintained it was his destiny to win a world title. It was laughed off by all, including Haye, who had just made easy work of John Ruiz.
But as a unification fight with either Klitschko fell further from his grasp, Haye was suddenly searching for a challenge for a December defence. For the first time since that Miami spar he and Harrison were suddenly on the same agenda and before long, the pair had signed for a reunion in the ring at the MEN Arena in Manchester, with the world watching.
Betrayal
They met up again at a press conference at the Park Plaza Hotel in London. Harrison talked about "betrayal" and Haye - who had already made some unsavoury comments in the press - was suddenly cast as the villain of the piece, the man that had turned his back on a man who had shown him the ropes.
Harrison had, he said, asked Haye for a favour and a spot on one of his undercards only to be flatly denied. When he had reached out, his one-time friend was not there.
The first meeting triggered a tit-for-tat exchange between the pair. Harrison claimed he knew Haye inside out and would not only get to him psychologically before a punch was thrown, but also exact his revenge by taking the world title. Haye did not come out of the opening exchanges well, the revelations doing little to boost a public persona which had was already lodged firmly in the bracket marked Marmite.
But for every Harrison dig, there was a Haye dig back. Few do the pre-fight verbals better and Haye held nothing back. There were times when you felt sorry for Audley, particularly when you stepped back and realised that it would need something extraordinarily special, something he'd never shown us before, for him to actually be crowned heavyweight champion of the world.
"Yes I can" he continually told us. "No you can't" boomed Haye's t-shirt at the weigh-in the day before their December 13 date. Every Audley offence had been countered quickly and unsympathetically. By the time Harrison was interviewed on Sky Sports after getting off the scales, he was an increasingly desperate man.
What was supposed to be his moment in the spotlight had been hijacked by Haye, he was now the comedy stooge in his own show. What had happened in front of Lennox Lewis in Miami was happening in front of millions more in the UK.
Humiliated
Sometimes personal grudges are good for the game, they bring untapped resources out of each fighter and make for a fight of pure animalistic venom, in which neither man is willing to concede an inch, determined to go to the bitter end rather than lose to a man they just don't like.
Sadly, on this occasion, it didn't happen. Harrison folded in three pathetic rounds, landing just a single punch before tumbling under a barrage that was anything but brutal. It was the final chance and he had blown it. The apprentice had not only upset the sorcerer, he had humbled and humiliated him.
So disappointing was the outcome, the conspiracy theorists claimed you could see Haye screaming "now" before flooring Harrison; so abject was Audley's display that the Board considered withholding his purse; so easy was it for Haye that the Board also investigated claims that he had backed himself to win in three.
And so one-sided had it been that even Haye, never a model of compassion towards any of his opponents, went to Harrison's dressing room to try and bury the hatchet.
He did just that, but you sense they will never be the best of friends as they had been as young men making their way in the game. They were the best of enemies though and their fall-out became the stuff of boxing legend; it was just a crying shame they turned out to be the worst of opponents.
