Question of Sport is filmed a few weeks before transmission but sometimes the wily production team like to give the false impression that the show is going out live. Thus on last night’s show Sue Barker conspiratorially wished David Haye good luck for tomorrow’s fight. And a millisecond’s panic was seen on Haye’s face that he was actually facing up the giant Valuev the next day (everybody seems to be referring to Valuev like that, as if he’s a character from a Slavonic folk-tale). Mental sparring with a leathery tennis commentator is hardly the best last-minute preparation for a fistfight with a massive Cretaceous throwback.
The rise of heavyweights from Eastern Europe has meant that less fights are taking place in the States and more in places such as Nuremburg and Minsk Square Garden. A positive effect of which is that if you’re in the Greenwich Mean Time gang you don’t have to staple your eyelids to your forehead to tune into the action.
As usual for bouts of this magnitude Sky are broadcasting it on a pay-per-view basis. I wouldn’t baulk at stumping up the £15 cost so much if I knew how much action I was going to enjoy. Because if Valuev brings down his anvil-fist onto the top of Haye’s bonce and knocks him out in the first round then I will certainly feel short-changed.
I suggest a pro rata system, with possibly a cab-style meter running in a top corner which ticks over for the duration of the fight. That would be Valuev for money.
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