Paul Briggs is the fall guy as fight is scrutinised

IN THE business of administering self-harm to its image, boxing is unrivalled and the fallout from Wednesday's farcical IBO cruiserweight title fight in Australia will leave all devotees of the sport in despair.

Champion Danny Green's first-round stoppage defeat of Paul Briggs at the Challenge Stadium in Perth is the subject of an inquiry from the Western Australian Sports Commission after irregular betting patterns were reported.

The fight lasted just 29 seconds, the 34-year-old Briggs dropping to the canvas and being counted out after taking a hit on the top of the head with what appeared to be an innocuous glancing left jab from Green.

There was a furious initial reaction from both the crowd and Green. While the 37-year-old champion grabbed a microphone to condemn Briggs, screaming: "He's not even a canine", the hapless challenger was pelted with missiles, including beer bottles, as he left the ring.

By yesterday morning, Green had significantly changed tack, insisting that, after viewing slow-motion footage of the fight, he now believed the punch had in fact hurt Briggs.

Most boxing fans are unlikely to be to easily convinced. A poll on the fightnews.com website yesterday showed that 87 per cent of respondents believed Briggs had taken a dive. That is also the suspicion of Australian bookmakers, who received a disproportionate amount of bets on a first round-knockout win for Green before the fight.

The choice of Briggs as an opponent had been controversial in any case as the former WBC light-heavyweight title challenger had not fought since February 2007. The contest was originally scheduled to take place in Sydney but was ruled out by the New South Wales commission on the grounds of Briggs' inactivity and suspected neurological problems. The Western Australian commission, however, allowed the fight to be relocated to Perth after insisting they had received satisfactory medical reports on Briggs.

Neil Evans, a director of bookmakers Centrebet, summed up the mood among the country's sporting fraternity yesterday. "Boxing has been kicked in the guts a million times and this is the most farcical thing we've probably seen in many years," said Evans. "The volume of bets, at the height of it all, were coming in every 30 seconds. We probably held more individual wagers on a round-one knockout in this fight than we have in combined fights in this country in the last 20 years."

Briggs, who was taken to hospital for checks after the fight but was not detained overnight, declined to comment as he left Perth to return to his Gold Coast home yesterday. It was left to Green, the former WBA light-heavyweight champion, to try and limit the damage the fiasco does to the sport in his country.

"I caught Briggs on the soft part of the skull on top of the head," said Green. "To the naked eye, it appears it hasn't landed properly, but the slow-motion pictures are proof he was felled by a legitimate blow to the head and actually a brain stem kind of injury has occurred."

l Commonwealth lightweight champion Lee McAllister will step up in weight when he tops the bill on his own Granite City Promotions show at the Beach Ballroom in Aberdeen on 3 September. The 27-year-old will face Istvan Nagy of Hungary for the IBO international light- welterweight belt as he considers a permanent move into the ten-stone division.

"I'm in line for a European lightweight title shot," said McAllister. "But I'm finding it more difficult to make the 9st 9lbs limit as I get older. So I am laying out my plans to move up a weight at some stage."