Boxers are taught to be disciplined, but Dereck Chisora and David Haye's brawl suggests they should not be a part of the sport



One thing is certain about the brawl in Munich between David Haye and Dereck Chisora: it was on the level. This was no hype for a fight between the two British heavyweights down the road (although that is now a tantalising possibility). It was the blood running strong in the middle of the night, when cool heads were needed but none evident.

Only the winner of the sanctioned fight, Vitali Klitschko, emerged with any credit. He was appalled from a distance as the man he had just beaten to retain his WBC heavyweight title went at it bare-fisted with the man who wants to fight him next. As an eliminator, it was pretty poor.

Haye gate-crashed the press conference and Chisora responded like a street thug. Haye won their little tiff with the best punch of the night (a crisp right to the jaw, in case you were wondering) before they were separated, but both were losers.

So was Bernd Boente, Klitschko's provocative promoter, who must have realised what he was doing when he goaded Haye by saying he would not get a fight with Vitali, that he had blown it, that there would be no more offers. Just because he wore a suit and did not throw a punch, doesn't mean Boente wasn't part of the brawl too.

The British Boxing Board of Control general secretary, Robert Smith, was rightly measured, on legal advice, in his response on Sunday morning — but the board has no choice but to fine them heavily and suspend them for a good period of time, at least six months, possibly longer. Actually, Haye doesn't have a licence at the moment, having retired on his 31st birthday last year, but he wants to fight again, as he made clear at the press conference.

I was on hand for three previous such brawls: Mark Kaylor v Errol Christie in London in 1985, Herbie Hide's quick tiff in a London street with Michael Bentt nine years later, and Mike Tyson v Lennox Lewis in New York in 2002.

This was on a par with the last of these, with the added ugliness of Chisora threatening to shoot Haye, a surreal footnote to a surreal week.

Reports that suggest German police were not taking any further action after questioning both fighters will come as a relief to them, but they remain condemned for their stupidity.

Why do fighters do this? They exist in an emotional business, putting their lives on the line in the ring and wrestling with all sorts of pressures outside of it, most of those involving money. Because it is more than a sport, it is an industry. There are many millions of pounds involved at the top level, for the fighters, managers and promoters, sanctioning bodies and television stations.

And it is money that drives boxing's bottom-line morals. Those whose job it is will find a way to get Haye and Chisora in a ring now, because they know it is what the public wants to see. If they could have sold tickets to last night's little shindig, they would have cleaned up.

Haye and Chisora disgraced themselves and their sport, and more specifically British boxing. Yet the hand-wringing will last a few days and the furore will die soon enough.

It is not specifically the fault of the sport, whose administrators strive as well as they can to contain the volatility of physical conflict between wired up boxers in peak condition. The responsibility lies ultimately with the fighters. They are taught all their sporting lives, since they were small boys, to be disciplined in the ring. There will always be some of them who cannot carry that simple philosophy into their own lives — and they should lose their right to be called boxers.