An Unstoppable Farce

 In a move that has stunned bookies and pundits alike, British boxing is doing something interesting, tonight.
 I say "British", but it's actually two British fighters using a license obtained in Luxembourg to fight in London to settle an argument started in Germany, but let's not split hairs.
 I'm really in two minds about the fight. I'd genuinely like to see it, except I would never actually give money to do so, as I don't like either fighter. Ultimately, it's Saturday night, and that means I can watch two wankers punch each other unconscious for nothing if I go to Wetherspoons.
 This isn't me being cheap, you understand. David Haye is, to my mind, everything that's wrong with modern boxing.
 Since Lennox Lewis retired in 2004, the heavyweight division has become a fractured, depressing cluster of disparate groups and territories. Fittingly, the people who have ruled it are invariably from Eastern Europe, a fractured, depressing cluster of groups and territories in itself.
 These lumpen ex-Soviet bruisers have dominated heavyweight fighting with all the media savvy and charisma of a roofing tile catalogue.
 Then David Haye, who had amassed an impressive cruiser-weight record, made the step to the big leagues.
 Haye was young, handsome, and full of ego, exactly as Muhammad Ali had been before him.
 Unfortunately, Ali's ego had a solid foundation, as it stemmed from the fact that Ali was one of the greatest boxers of all time.
 David Haye's ego, it soon became clear, was more to do with the fact that he was young and handsome.
 After making a lot of noise about fighting either one of the Klitschko brothers (including turning up at press conferences in a T-shirt depicting the brothers' severed heads), Haye succeeded in winning a belt in an unconvincing - and in my mind politically motivated - points victory over that bloke from Mordor.
 Shortly afterwards, he battered Audley Harrison. This isn't really noteworthy, as Audley Harrison is only a marginally better fighter than the late George Harrison, Rex Harrison, shortest-serving U.S. President William Henry Harrison, or Harrison Bergeron, the blind, deaf, shackled teenager in Kurt Vonnegut's story.
 Finally, Haye secured a fight with reigning champ and high-scoring Scrabble entry Wladimir Klitschko. After twelve draggy 3-minute rounds that somehow seemed to take about an hour and a half, Haye was declared the loser on points and blamed it on a broken toe.
 It's worth noting that foot injuries are a handicap in boxing; a properly delivered punch should involve the whole body, starting with the balls of the feet, and as such a broken toe would be a handicap. Haye's toe, on his right foot, made it harder to throw big right-hand punches.
 That being said, Muhammad Ali once boxed eight rounds with a broken jaw, and he didn't complain. (He might have, actually, but nobody would have understood him.)
 Haye's broken toe was no excuse for a dull, uninspired and skittish performance.
 Haye finally proved that he was a blowhard. Years of trash talk and braggadocio disappeared in one night, as he got the fight he'd been asking for and blew it. He immediately retired, at the age of 30.
 Nobody bought it for a second.
 Haye stayed in the lime-light, or at least close to it. The lemon-light, maybe. He kept making noises, and made sure we didn't forget him, and everyone with even an ounce of foresight could see he was waiting to announce a comeback.
 The opportunity came after his much publicised brawl with Dereck Chisora, in which he appeared at the press conference following Chisora's loss to Vitali Klitschko and basically called him a pussy. Ignoring the fact that both men are black, this was a clear case of the pot calling the kettle a pussy.
 A fight broke out, during which Haye glassed Chisora. He later claimed that he'd reflexively punched him and happened to be holding a glass bottle at the time, which had shattered on impact. This might have been an accident, although the "accident" excuse was less believable when Haye picked up a nearby camera tripod to swing at someone's head.
 Shortly afterwards, Haye anounced that he was coming out of retirement for a grudge match with Chisora.
 It was a spectacularly exploitative play that exactly everyone saw coming.
 So, David Haye is what's wrong with modern boxing. Arrogant, cynical and only in it for the money, he's going into tonight's fight as the bookmaker's favourite, if nobody else's.
 So, Chisora is my horse, right?
 No, because Chisora is what's always been wrong with boxing.
 A sullen, untalented brawler, Chisora disgraced himself on multiple occasions before the Haye brawl, slapping Vitali Klitchsko's face on their first meeting and spitting on his family before the fight.
 He has also been convicted of assaulting an ex-girlfriend.
 There's nothing wrong with bogeymen in boxing; Sonny Liston was seen as sullen and frightening. But Liston was, at heart, a shy and awkward man who, despite his functional illiteracy, made a point of always finding out what unfamiliar words meant when he heard them in conversation, and using them at the next opportunity as a way of bettering himself.
 Max Baer, the giant, snarling villain of the movie "Cinderella Man", who killed a man in the ring, was in reality a jovial, pleasant character who wore a star of David in sympathy with the oppressed Jews of Europe and wept at the bedside of the man he killed, never truly forgiving himself.
 Dereck Chisora, meanwhile, is a cunt. Almost anyone who's ever hit a woman is, but in the case of trained fighters, it's especially low.
 Of course, David Haye is a whore and a cynic, so his entire pre-fight rhetoric has been based on reminding everyone that he's fractionally more palatable than Chisora.
 Overall, this means a win-win situation for me. One of these fucking bell ends is going to get his head stoved in, and I really don't mind which one it is. Ideally, they'll manage a photo-finish knockout like the end of "Rocky 2." If I'm especially lucky, one or both of them will fall out of the ring and crush Chris Moyles to death, but this is probably asking too much.
 Unfortunately, as both men stand to profit from this fight, I'm not going to be able to bring myself to order it on the TV.
 So I'm off to find a pub that's showing it.

 My prediction? Chisora for the win. Violent, unskilled asshole over preening, flashy choker.