Eyes on the prize after a $6m scam

PARANOIA, they destroy ya (here it goes again). So sang the peerless Ray Davies of the Kinks in the 1980s.

And that was the thought running through my head on Saturday after wasting more than eight minutes of my life, and more than €20, on the “Best of Enemies” fight at the Manchester Arena between Audley Harrison and David Haye.

It wasn’t the first time in the history of the sweet sport that title bouts have disappointed. The man whose career established the heavyweight championship as a Blue Riband event in the last century, The Galveston Giant, Jack Johnson, never recovered from the allegation that he threw his 1915 title bout against Kansas cowboy Jess Willard.