IT'S NOT PERSONAL, IT'S BUSINESS

July 19, 2006 - by Nat Gottlieb

Although Vivian Harris has won a world championship and defended it successfully three times, the toughest opponent he has ever faced has been himself. If there were such a thing as "self-inflicted" losses, then the two Harris has on his record and the championship he squandered away would be so listed. Harris can punch with power, attack from angles and throw combos with the best around. The one thing Vivian Harris has not been able to do yet is conquer his own "Vicious" shadow.

Over the course of what can only be described as an incendiary career, Harris has given new meaning to the saying, "He is his own worst enemy." Pick a negative personality trait for a championship-caliber fighter to be saddled with and Harris has had it: too high-strung, intensely emotional, in-and-out-of focus, over-trained, under-trained, distracted by wars with his handlers - you name it, Harris has been there and done that.

But still young at 28, Harris appears to have undergone an extreme makeover, and is gunning for a "rematch" with himself. In Harris' favor is that he has a new manager, new promoter, has reunited with his first-ever trainer and is telling everyone who will listen his attitude now is "more mature." "Vicious" Vivian (26-2-1, 17 KOs) will get his chance at Round 1 of "Harris vs. Harris II" this Saturday on HBO's "Boxing After Dark."

"We know Vivian's past, we know what happened," said his new manager and longtime friend, Jose Nunez. "He wasn't mentally there for some fights. He had too many distractions and put too much pressure on himself. But right now he knows he has to win. He can't lose any more. This is his only chance."

As chances go, Harris is well worth another throw of the dice. In the words of his new promoter, Gary Shaw, "Vivian is the whole package."

Inside that package is a two-fisted, highly-skilled fighter who is big enough at 5' 11 with a 74-inch reach to make waves at junior welterweight and beyond. A man who knows more than a little about Harris' ability is Emanuel Steward, the Hall of Fame trainer, HBO commentator and former corner man for Harris:

"Vivian is one of the most talented fighters in the world," said Steward, who had a brief, two-fight stint with Harris from October of 2004 to June of last year. "As a person, he was very good with me in training. His only problem is he gets so worked up about things."

How worked up? If they gave championship belts for the emotional battles Harris has waged outside the ring, he would need a special room just to house them. Given Harris' enormous talent, by all rights he should be unbeaten today. Both losses can be easily excused, not by errant judges, but his own self-destructive nature. His lone draw came when he was victimized by New Jersey's brief experiment with a 10-point majority scoring system, which was quickly abandoned. Had the current system been at work, Harris would have beaten Ivan Robinson by unanimous decision.

Harris' career has also been hamstrung by a failure to get his face on TV. He won his junior welterweight title in 2002 by beating Diosbelys Hurtado in a televised bout, but would make three straight successful defenses without TV exposure. Then, in a bitter irony, when he finally did get before the cameras on the under card of a much-hyped Floyd Mayweather-Arturo Gatti pay-per-view event on HBO last year, he let runaway emotions destroy his game plan and wound up getting knocked out by an opponent who didn't belong in the same ring with him.

One sign - albeit a small one - that Harris may have his head on straight now came when he recently celebrated his birthday by forgoing cake and champagne, opting instead for another day of training in his Brooklyn gym, Gleason's.

"I have matured," Harris said. "I could say this and that about (fighting) Hatton, about Cotto, but why? I am truly focused on this fight. If I don't get past it, I won't get nowhere."

If Harris' career was a video game, you'd find yourself in a loaded Mercedez SL550 Roadster using your joystick on a winding highway with constant obstacles popping up. Some, you'd negotiate around; others, you'd crash and burn.

Let's grab the joystick and take a little "Tour de Harris."

February 25, 2000. You find yourself a highly-regarded, 16-0 prospect, up against a 32-year-old, somewhat fading former contender, Ray Oliveria, at a chic-sounding venue - "Rhodes-on-the-Pawtuxet - located not in France, however, but Cranston, R.I., which just happens to be in your opponent's backyard of New Bedford, MA. You do not know it yet, but you are steering into the worst eight-month trip of your life.

Although Oliveira is squarely in your way, you can see down the road that much bigger fights await you on the near horizon. So instead of training hard for Oliveira, you let your emotions cloud reason. "Thinking about the other, bigger fights got me so hyper I didn't even focus on Oliveira," Harris said. "I watched one tape, wasn't impressed with what I saw and moved on."

In his on-going battle with himself, Harris suffers his first career defeat to Oliveira on a close but unanimous decision. Afterwards, the crafty veteran Oliveira says, "I ain't no stepping stone for nobody." A lesson Harris should have learned then, but does not.

Six months after Oliveira, things go from bad to worse on the "Tour de Harris." Against the well-regarded Robinson, who had beaten Arturo Gatti in back-to-back fights in 1998, Harris appears to have won their Atlantic City fight, and was on top of all three judges scorecards. But Harris is forced to accept a draw because of New Jersey's then 10-point majority scoring system. While Harris led by scores of 95-93, 95-94 and 96-93, Jersey's convoluted, consensus-scoring system added up to a 94-94 draw. Ringside analyst Teddy Atlas, who worked the ESPN2 fight and scored it conventionally, had it for Harris by a wider margin of 97-92.

Two months later, after a workout in Gleason's, Harris comes out and is stabbed in the stomach by a mugger, who grabs some jewelry and runs. Harris is forced to undergo emergency surgery to stop internal bleeding and his training is set back a few months.

Today, Harris politely declines to discuss the mugging incident, saying he has put it behind him. But in the past he was quoted as saying it opened his eyes to things, realizing that when it came to boxing, "there are more important things to get upset about."

Smart words. Important words, especially for a young fighter who in an eight-month period had just lost a fight he had no business losing, was victimized by a scoring-system experiment and seriously mugged. For a while, it looks like Harris has learned the painful lesson.

Harris reels off five straight victories to finally set himself up for a world title shot against Hurtado (35-2-1). At the time, Hurtado had been stopped just twice in his career, first by Pernell Whitaker on an 11th round TKO, later by Kostya Tszyu on a 5th round TKO. Harris makes shorter work of the champion, scoring a TKO 43 seconds into the second round. In the locker room afterwards, Harris rejoices, believing he has finally arrived.

But while Harris waits for offers to fight name-brand boxers, months go by with nothing materializing. Harris grows increasing more emotional and agitated.

Nine months after winning his belt, Harris finally gets his first title defense. He will face mandatory challenger Souleymane M'Baye on the under card of an HBO-televised event which features three world championship bouts. Unfortunately for Harris, only the first two -- Ricardo Mayorga-Vernon Forrest II and Zab Judah-DeMarcus Corley -- are televised. Harris' bout is contested before HBO goes on air - "in the dark" as fighters say.

Harris wins, but is not a happy camper over the lack of TV exposure. Impulsively, he fires Lennox Blackmoore, his trainer since he was 13, and brings in his father Herman, a trainer in Harris' native Guyana.

Again, it will be nine months before a fight comes on the table, this time against Oktay Urkal, who is 34-1, in Germany. Though unfocused and upset about fighting on foreign soil Harris manages to squeak out a majority decision, 114-112, 114-112 and 113-113.

Harris' camp now begins negotiations for a fight with the unbeaten British sensation, Ricky Hatton, a huge celebrity in England, but not well known in the States. What follows is, even by Harris' standards, a wild and bumpy ride.

Soon as Harris gets word of the talks with Hatton, he fires his father and brings in Steward to both manage and train him. The offer that finally emerges would easily be Harris' biggest payday ever, a reported $750,000. But Harris' pride and overblown sense of his market worth gets squarely in the way. He reasons - if reason is an applicable word here - that since he is champion, he should not take less than the reported $1 million the challenger is to get. Toss in the fact that the champion will have to travel to England, something generally not done, and Harris goes ballistic, letting his feelings be known widely in the media.

In the end, after several rounds of heated discussion, talks fall through and the only thing Harris gets out of it is a reputation as a malcontent, which does nothing to make him a more promotable fighter. A frustrated Hatton, meanwhile, adds fuel to the negative fire by telling a Manchester newspaper he is "gutted" and calls Harris "an absolute plonker." What ever that means, it obviously isn't flattering. With Harris out of the picture, Hatton fights Michael Stewart instead for the IBF mandatory shot, beats him and then defeats Tszyu in a signature bout to win his first world championship.

And Harris? Instead of a possible Hatton-to-Tszyu parlay, he ends up back in Germany for a rematch with Urkal - and at a reported less than half the money ($300,000) Hatton's promoter Frank Warren had offered. Despite the missed opportunity, Steward maintains it was probably best Harris didn't fight Hatton at the time, especially in England.

"Vivian was going through a lot of changes, with his promoter and his previous manager, and everyone else," Steward said. "He finally just passed on the fight, and I would say he had pretty good reasons to do that. The main thing for me, he was going up against a lot of things and was not comfortable. Any time a fighter is not comfortable, you as a trainer have to respect that."

With Steward in his corner for the rematch, Harris beats Urkal even more convincingly, scoring an 11th round TKO. But again, the fight is not seen in America, and does nothing to build his marketability.

"Those two fights with Urkal were wasted by not being seen in America on TV," new promoter Shaw said. "Those were two huge wins overseas and nobody saw him."

Eight months will now pass before Harris finally winds up in a showcase event in America. Harris is slated to fight on the televised under card of a much-awaited showdown between popular Gatti and the world's No. 1 pound-for-pounder, Mayweather, on HBO Pay-Per-View in Atlantic City.

Harris' opponent is not top flight -- undistinguished challenger Carolo Maussa, who is 2-2 in his last four bouts, including a victory prior to facing Harris over a boxer making his pro debut. The buzz, however, is that if Harris wins, he will face the winner of Mayweather-Gatti.for a mega-bucks pay day.

Certainly this is great news for Harris. Perhaps too great. The overly-emotional Harris reacts in the worst possible way, stepping up his training to a needlessly furious pace, one even Steward can't slow down.

"He over-trained himself," Steward said. "I tried to hold him back, but he was so anxious about being impressive for this fight that he just trained too hard."

If that isn't bad enough, fight night turns into a nightmare. Before he even enters the ring, Harris gets into a major squabble over tickets he ordered for his family. Harris wanted ringside seats, ends up with ones in the stands. Nothing is resolved, and Harris winds up buzzed into an angry frenzy.

"I was yelling about tickets the night of the fight and then I was so mad I said to myself, I am going to go out and hurt this dude," Harris recalls.

In that frame of mind, Harris bolts from his corner at the opening bell and starts throwing heavy hands, going for a quick knockout. Steward has barely left the apron when things heat up.

"I heard the crowd start going crazy and it looked like he (Harris) had the guy hurt, so he did what most great fighters do, tried to take him out," Steward said.

But Maussa has a very awkward style, and Harris and the crowd have mistaken his wobbly movement for being hurt when in fact the challenger is not. As the round ends with Maussa still on his feet, Steward figures it out.

"When I realized it was just that he (Maussa) was such an awkward fighter, I said to Vivian when he came to the corner, ‘Okay, forget about taking him out, let's settle down and go back to boxing,'" Steward said. "But he was too emotional, he just couldn't settle himself down, and by the time he did, he was too drained to box."

The result is a stunning, 7th round knockout for Maussa, who will promptly loses his title to Hatton in his next fight. Harris' fragile world, meanwhile, comes crashing down. Before he would surface in the ring again seven months later, his whole boxing team has changed.

Blackmoore is brought back to replace Steward. Harris signs on with Shaw, who is widely-regarded as a "fighter's promoter." As for manager, Harris chooses 33-year-old Nunez, a longtime friend from Gleason's, a Dominican native who had struggled his way out of a Bushwick ghetto in Brooklyn to become a millionaire owner of a record label in his twenties. Nunez has one fight credential, but it is a good one. He manages fellow Dominican and undefeated lightweight contender, Joan Guzman (25-0), another friend of Harris.

Nunez, who is credited for ironing out problems Guzman had earlier in his career, takes swift action with Harris. The manager's first priority is to let Harris know who is in charge, beginning with training camp.

"This was the first camp Vivian has ever been in where he didn't call all the shots," Nunez said. "I'm running everything. I set the rules, and he has been going along. He used to bring his wife to camp, I cut that out. I will take care of all the distractions, like tickets."

Harris appears to be okay with Nunez running the show. "It has definitely helped me to focus. I don't have to deal with anything but my training, and because of that I am very relaxed," Harris said. "Jose has been with me for a while, he's seen what I've been through. I was always distracted. But that was in the past, you have to move ahead. I look at a lot of what I went through as having had to pay my dues."

In Shaw, Harris is taking on a promoter with whom he had past dealings before, all of which were positive.

"I like Vivian very much," Shaw said. "I always got along good with him, so he feels comfortable with me. My game plan was to give him a warm-up (Jan. 20 decision over journeyman Martese Logan), and now he is on ‘Boxing After Dark.' If he does well there, we will look to get him a title fight. The big thing is just to get Vivian back in the (title) mix."

So far, Harris seems to be doing his part. Asked if he felt he was starting over, Harris said, "No, I look at this as a continuation of Vivian Harris. I'm going to take this one fight at a time. I'm not going to worry about whether the big fights come. I've got a promoter who will take care of that."

Only time will tell if Harris will win his "rematch" with himself. But for now, he sounds like he is on the right track, and that could spell trouble for best boxers in the junior welterweight division.