If you've got all that in a 120-kilogram super heavyweight it's a formidable package

If you've got all that in a 120-kilogram super heavyweight it's a formidable package."Indeed it is. By the time I get up there Lewis and Holyfield will be retired and all the other guys are just pretenders.""He's certainly ready for it," says the ABA national coach Ian Irwin "He can box, he can hit and he can move his feet. Some may say I am lazy but I throw quality punches, just like the pros. It will take a future world champion to beat me and I don't see one out there except me. Not turning pro until after the Olympics doesn't bother me at all I am a fresh young fighter, although my age says I am not I am getting better and better.

"After studying sports psychology as part of my degree I know I have the mental edge I am moving well and hitting like a mule. First, though, he has to prove he can cope successfully with the big boys of Belarus, Russia, Italy, Cuba, Canada and the US, and the more dramatically the better, in Houston and Sydney."I don't see anything out there that really worries me," he says. Such is the deepening malaise in the pro game that it is hardly an exaggeration to say that this huge, amiable man is its potential saviour. "I am going to be the greatest heavyweight ever to come out of Britain," he declared at the time.No one is more acutely aware than Harrison that he has a fortune in his fists if he can punch his way to a medal in Houston and then compound it in Sydney before turning professional. But is he really the business? This southpaw son of a west London plasterer - one of a family of six - is a double ABA champion and won last year's Commonwealth Games final spectacularly in 63 seconds, after a total of just 15 minutes of boxing.

I want them tugging at my trousers, begging for autographs."Self-belief clearly doesn't come second in the Harrison psyche. Not since the great Muhammad has a heavyweight talked such a good fight. It is a calculated gamble which, he believes, will catapult the hundreds of thousands he has been offered now into a good few million should he return from Sydney with that golden medallion dangling from his neck.He already has the clout, the confidence and the charisma and awaits only the ring cred that an Olympic title would bring "That Olympic Gold is in my head already," he said. "I want to come back from Sydney, walk down the street and get rushed by the kids.

Harrison's decision to reject the bait of professional promoters and go for broke - or in his case, from broke - in the Olympics is well chronicled. Britain has never won a medal in these championships - indeed it is 32 years since we struck Olympic gold - but big Audley is not alone in believing that the drought is about to end. Thanks to persistent drum banging by Harrison and lobbying by the new enlightened leadership of the Amateur Boxing Association, the best-prepared team for many years takes off for a training base in Tallahassee, Florida, with almost pounds 500,000 of Lottery funding and the real prospect of tangible rewards both in Houston and next year's Sydney Olympics.Not least, of course, for the 27-year-old super heavyweight who, in every sense is the biggest thing to hit amateur boxing since Lennox Lewis acquired the Olympic title for Canada in Seoul. He also has one of the best brains, having graduated from Brunel University last month with a 2:2 in Sports Studies and Leisure Management, producing a 10,000-word thesis entitled A Sociological Perspective on the Justification of Amateur Boxing, which he hopes to publish as a book. Never short of a few words, this self-styled Ali of the amateur ranks transports his impressive combination of muscle and mind across the Atlantic on Wednesday, leading an eight-strong English squad to the World Championships, which begin in Houston, Texas, six days later. AT 6FT 6IN and 181/2st Audley Harrison, BSc (Hons), has the broadest shoulders in British boxing, broad enough, he reckons to carry the future hopes of an ailing fight game. He might even sneak out at the head of his team - a few paces behind the manager, of course - just to savour the full atmosphere Over the years, he reckons, he has earned the right.. For the first 20 years of his footballing life, he supported Cardiff City, never missed a game.