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Audley Harrison, originally from Harlesden, England, achieved international fame when he won the gold medal for superheavyweight boxing in the 2000 Olympics, held in Sydney, Australia. Harrison is in the limelight once again, but this time, his battles are taking place on the felt instead of inside the ring.

When celebrities and star athletes enter major poker tournaments, particularly the glitzed-out and glammed-up World Series of Poker, there’s little cause for a news story – in many cases, celebs play poker to gamble and increase their fame, not because of an actual love of the game.

But Audley Harrison is different. In an interview with PokerListings, Harrison said that he’s at the WSOP for one thing and one thing only: a bracelet. It’s not too hard to believe the 6’5″, 250 lbs athlete, either – since first playing in the WSOP in 2007, Harrison has racked up well over $220k in live poker tournament earnings, not to mention a huge amount of high stakes cash game experience.

When Harrison was interviewed, he was already deep into a $1,500 buy-in 6-Max NLHE event, and showing no signs of slowing down. “There’s so much to this game that I didn’t have a clue about when I started, whereas now I feel like I understand the nuances of the game, and I can hold my own with the best players in these events.”

As with many professional athletes who become poker players, Harrison sees plenty of similarities between the game he was playing then and the game he’s playing now. “People see boxing as all crash, bang, whallop, but it’s called the sweet science for a reason and there’s a real science to poker as well.”

Harrison currently lives in California and Las Vegas.

All quotes courtesy of PokerListings.com.