Dubs on a downer as Cork take five and Dunne takes drubbing

TV VIEW:"TYSON FURY", of course, sounds like an account of the night Evander Holyfield lost his right ear, but as we now know he's a heavyweight boxer of Irish extraction who stands 6ft 9in tall and weighs not far off 19st.

“Truly, a massive lump of a man,” as Jimmy Magee described him on Saturday night when he – Tyson, not Jimmy – came out to fight Tomas Mrazek at the O2 Arena.

“How big is big?” Jimmy asked us. “Well, he’s able to play at this size in the secondrow of a rugby team, a full international team. If he could play rugby, that is,” he explained.

Back in the studio Andy Lee told us that Tyson, who makes Paul O’Connell look as lofty as Willie Carson, was his second cousin, that their grannies were sisters, and he was born premature, weighing only one pound. “Jaysus,” said Jim Rock, “it’s just as well he didn’t go full term, the size of him.”

Tyson, then, has put on 18st, 8lb in just 21 years, his fighting qualities as a frail baby prompting his family to give him his name. You could say he fulfilled a sporting prophecy, but his grandfather was called Tiger Gorman and he was a boxer, so these things don’t always work out. When’s the last time you saw Woods in the ring?

“Not even a Hollywood mogul and his publicity department could come up with a name as good as this for a fighter,” said Jimmy, who reckoned Tyson could have a big future in America. “He can punch, he looks well, he’s big and strong and he’s white – which is very important for America, if you’re going to get in the big market there,” he said.

Perhaps fearing he’d be engulfed in a Tommy Tiernan-ish firestorm, Jimmy quickly added: “And that’s not racist, believe me.”

Anyway, Jimmy and his commentary box companion Dave “Boy” McAuley confidently forecast Tyson would dispatch Tomas into the middle of next week in the first round or two of their bout. But it wasn’t happening, with the pair growing increasingly frustrated with Tyson’s inability to put his opponent away.

“See how high Mrazek’s elbows are? You could park a JCB in there,” noted Dave Boy, who encouraged Tyson to “move downstairs” because Mrazek was blocking all his head shots.

“Yes,” Jimmy growled, “move downstairs and throw out the lodger.”

In the end, mercifully, Tomas and his lodger remained intact, but Tyson won on points, earning him an interview with Marty Morrissey. In time Marty’s right arm will recover from the strain of holding his microphone up to the summit that is Tyson’s mouth.

That fight, though, was only a warm-up for the main event, which, of course, turned in to a bit of a heartbreaker.

The build-up started with a piece on Bernard Dunne’s home life, the highlight of which was him on his tummy trying – and failing – to persuade his daughter’s pet rabbit to come out from under the parked car in his driveway.

We caught glimpses of both sides of Bernard in this clip: at first, the man: sweet, gentle, light-hearted, jocular. “Here Buggsie, Buggsie.” Then, some time later, the fighter: a fearsome, volcanic, fire-breathing beast. “Listen Bugs, I’ll reverse over you in me Hummer if you don’t get the **** out of there, pronto”. He didn’t actually say that, but we know it’s what he was thinking.

Honestly, we were afraid to look when he made his way to the ring for fear he’d have a flattened rabbit’s foot dangling from his gloves. True, it might have brought him good fortune, but it would have signalled that Bugs’ luck had truly run out.

It started well enough, although both Jimmy and Dave Boy worried that Bernard wasn’t reversing down his driveway fast enough after throwing a punch, so to speak. “Deliver the milk and go to the next house,” advised Jimmy, although he stopped short of suggesting he evict the neighbour’s lodger.

But, the third round? Best not to talk about it. Other than to say Poonsawat Kratingdaenggym (whose name prompted our spellchecker to suggest we give the methylated spirits a rest) won.

The RTÉ panel was gutted, although they’d had their concerns before the fight. “Your man had dynamite in his hands,” concluded Rock, “and you can’t put muscles on your chin.”

Not the best of weekends for Dubs, as it proved, as the women’s team suffered a gut-wrencher of a loss to Cork in yesterday’s All-Ireland football final. That’s five-(count ’em)-in-a-row for Cork, who’ve forgotten how to lose.

“I would like to say to the Kilkenny hurlers: see your four, raise you one,” grinned captain Mary O’Connor, who appeared to stand 6ft 9in through her post-match speech. A massive lump of an achievement.