Anyone remember when boxing was great? You’d need a memory like an elephant. We have been insulted and treated with contempt for years by greedy promoters, over-hyped next-big-things and blubbering has-beens.

The game had gone long before we were treated to the spectacle of Audley Harrison, an Olympic champion, with less heart than the lion in the Wizard of Oz. The once-awesome Mike Tyson was reduced to a freak show inside and out of the ring, banged up for rape, beaten by nonentities Danny Williams and Kevin McBride, bankrupt and washed up.

Since Lennox Lewis hung up his gloves in 2002, there have been more than a dozen holders of what used to be called The Greatest Prize In Sport, the heavyweight championship of the world. Hulking Eastern Europeans now dominate but who can take the brothers Klitschko seriously when they sound more like an intimate part of the female anatomy?

'Who can take the brothers Klitschko seriously when they sound more like an intimate part of the female anatomy?'


Admittedly, Roy Jones Jr. is a magnificent fighter, but he was nothing more than a pumped-up middleweight who showed the poverty of the heavyweight division by winning the WBA title in 2003 before reverting back to light heavy.

There was the unedifying sight of a bloated George Foreman lumbering through another failed comeback at the age of 48 and, just a few weeks ago, four-times world champion Evander Holyfield stumbled to a unanimous points defeat at the hands of Russia’s Sultan Ibragimov six days before his 45th birthday.

But this weekend boxing has the chance to revive some of its zero credibility. Even the criminally over-hyped Amir Khan gets the chance to fight a real opponent in a 21st birthday bash against the experienced Graham Earl for the Commonwealth Lightweight title at Bolton Arena on Saturday night.

However, the real event comes in the early hours of Sunday morning when an Englishman with a love for pints of Guinness and Lonsdale belt-busting fry-ups takes on the universally acclaimed best pound-for-pound fighter on the planet.

Surely even the most diehard Scouser will want Manchester’s Ricky Hatton to wipe the cheeseburger grin from the unblemished face of Floyd Mayweather Jr. It’s billed as “Undefeated” as both men have never lost a pro fight.

Mayweather himself doesn’t do modesty – “I respect what Robinson and Ali did for the sport. But I am the greatest, and this is my time,” he told the world in the build-up to this weekend’s world welterweight showdown. The man has more lip than the crater at Mount St Helens, but Hatton has come out with the best pre-fight punchline, insisting: “If there was such a thing as re-incarnation, Floyd would come back as himself’."

In the build-up, Mayweather was cocky enough and confident enough to take seconds out and compete in the US version of Strictly Come Dancing. He was knocked out in the fourth round, which will do Hatton very nicely on Sunday.

But Hatton won’t be fooled into complacency. Mayweather has been rated Ring Magazine best boxer in the world since 2005. He has been a fighting phenomenon since he started in 1996. He has traded on his Pretty Boy image but he has also won SIX world boxing championships in five different weight classes, and has beaten greats like Oscar De La Hoya. Hatton is one of the best British boxers of all time and is only now getting the recognition after 43 unbeaten fights and IBF and IBO light welterweight titles to his name.

For the first time in God knows how long, I have the urge to set the alarm for 4am or whenever and listen to a boxing match, just like the old days when the sound of Clay beating Liston or the Rumble in the Jungle or the Thriller in Manila crackled over the airwaves.

There’s just a chance that this once-proud sport of professional boxing might clamber out of the gutter in the early hours of Sunday morning at the MGM Grand Garden Arena. And I for one don’t want to miss it.