A squalid spectacle which disgraces all who watch it...

BOXING, the squalid spectacle that has the nerve to call itself a sport, has claimed another victim in Mike Towell, brain damaged and dead within 24 hours of his final bout.

It is proof yet again that professional boxing, ‘the noble art of self-defence’, is nothing of the sort. It is licensed thuggery, an organised barbarity disgracing everyone who watches it, takes part in it, promotes it or profits from it.

There is nothing ‘noble’ about pitting two hard-up, hungry or deluded young men against each other and baying for their blood, urging them on until one or other is battered into submission or, worse, unconsciousness.

It is part of the sick farce that Mike Towell was known as ‘Iron Mike’. His needless death at the age of 25 shows that the human body is anything but iron and can only take so much punishment.

Yet boxing revels in cruelty. Why else have boxers down the years been promoted with nicknames like Tommy ‘The Hitman’ Hearns ... James ‘Bonecrusher’ Smith . ... Roberto ‘Hands of Stone’ Duran … Jake ‘Raging Bull’ La Motta? As a callow teenager, I saw close-up the damage done to fighters when my uncle in Kirkcaldy became a boxing promoter as one of his failed entrepreneurial enterprises.

Even after all these years I cannot erase the aftermath of the fights from my memory. Bleeding and barely-conscious boxers were brought home to be stitched up on our kitchen table, their groans and the curses of their handlers keeping us awake throughout the night.

Decades later, I covered the aftermath of a fight involving Joe Bugner, then a promising heavyweight who went on to become European champion and fought Muhammad Ali for the world title.

Bugner was never the heaviest of hitters and the crowd were booing and urging him to go for the kill. Bugner won on points, to the crowd’s disappointment; his opponent suffered brain damage and died. Yet when I campaigned against professional boxing in a newspaper column, I received the expected abuse and hate mail – and also an invitation to attend a formal-dress boxing night in Glasgow with the privilege of a ringside table.

Some privilege! Having your table showered with blood, sweat and snot rather puts you off the main course.

Animal blood sports – dogfighting, cockfights, badger-baiting, hare-coursing – are banned in this country, as they should be in any civilised society. Only humans are allowed to attack each other physically in public paid-for events.

Young men train themselves to a peak of fitness and strength so that they can inflict the greatest injury on a fellow human being. Unless professional boxing is outlawed or altered so that it becomes less vicious, potential death and crippling injury will always be in the ring with them.