Lie down with dogs you can get fleas

Reaching bleary-eyed to flick on the bedside radio for the eight o'clock sports news on Sunday morning was a pretty disheartening experience. The cant, the hypocrisy and the ill-informed jingoism that were laced through the reports from Madison Square Garden made for profoundly deflating listening for anyone who purports to have even a passing interest in sport.

As depressing sporting scenarios go, Lewis-Holyfield, and the unseemly post-fight witch-hunt, ranks mighty high. And we thought Tyrone's 1995 All-Ireland final defeat was bad.

Perhaps worst of all was the unavoidable evidence of the culture of cynicism within which the whole sorry saga was played out. The appalling spectacle of Don King appealing to everyone's sense of fair play so that a re-match could go ahead was proof of the depths that are now being plumbed. Allegations of fight-fixing can now be added to match-fixing, systematic drug ingestion and homophobia as part of sport's rich, end of the millennium tapestry.

Standing ankle deep in the ashes of sport's credibility was not a good way to start a week where tales of Cheltenham heroism and All-Ireland club horn-locking promised so much. But there were shoots of encouragement lurking in the shadows of last weekend and there was proof that the culture of Lewis, Holyfield, Don King and Sky TV does not necessarily have to be our culture. You just had to look pretty hard to find it.

Six hours before the shadow-boxing started in New York three young Belfast men - ostensibly professionals in the same sport, but in reality a world away - were in action a few thousand miles away in Manchester. The brightest star in the firmament was Damean Kelly who, at the end of 12 rounds of superlative boxing, won a comfortable points victory over Birmingham's Anthony Hanna to add the British flyweight title to the Commonwealth version he already held. On the same bill two other formerly outstanding amateurs - Brian Magee and David Lowry - made winning professional debuts. Unsurprisingly there was no great media rush to give these men column inches or air time.

Part of you fears for Kelly because he is a man who exudes so much modesty and reserve that you wonder how he can survive as a small fry among the sharks. But then you look at his amateur record - Commonwealth champion and Atlanta Olympics quarter-finalist - and you realise he is more than able to look after himself. His trouble-free progress through the professional foothills and the journeymen of British professional boxing has been focussed and controlled. Just nine fights and already he has two titles tucked away. There are even hints of burgeoning self-confidence and self-promotion that always seems to come so alien to him as a world title contest looms larger and larger on the horizon. "I've got the class to go all the way," he said, "and it's just a matter of time before I'm fighting for the world title."

The influence of his amateur coach, Michael Hawkins, who has followed his charge into the paid game, has been a stabilising influence for Kelly. But how long can the two of them continue together while remaining aloof from all the braggadocio around them? The signs in the build-up to last Saturday's fight were not encouraging.

Enter Panos Eliades, one of boxing's behind the scenes heavyweights and the financial muscle behind Lewis. The man who spent two years copper-fastening the deal with Don King which brought his fighter and Holyfield together, has begun to cast his inquisitive eye further afield. Damean Kelly is the man in his sights. "Damaen's amateur pedigree is outstanding," he said. "He did a great job on his debut in America and we are certainly looking forward to bringing him back. I think he can be very big in America."

Sound familiar? For Kelly read McCullough and the waters become much more muddied than Eliades' philanthropic words might first suggest. Like Kelly, Wayne McCullough has a quality which can best be described as a kind of goodness that sets him apart from the people around him, the people who would try to milk him like a cash-cow. For a while it looked like McCullough might be pulled down by the undertow of the promoters and money men, but he has emerged out the other side in control of his own destiny.

A thumb-nail sketch of the former Olympic champion's journey through the tortuous waters of US professional boxing would make salutary reading for Damaen Kelly as his innate talent threatens to propel him into a situation where he faces the same sort of difficult decisions that bedevilled McCullough.

Wayne McCullough fielded a raft of slavering enquiries from professional promoters after returning from the Barcelona Olympics but was seduced by the offer of an future in Las Vegas. In the early stages his relationship with his new manager Matt Tinley worked well, landing a world title in the process, but as things turned sour McCullough broke with Tinley and now looks after his own affairs with his wife Cheryl.

And so that nagging fear for Kelly persists because the portents are not good. Dip a little further back into recent history, to Barry McGuigan, whose career straddled the same world title success and managerial acrimony as McCullough's, and sheer pessimism begins to take hold. This is a sport, which in its professional incarnation at least, limps along very close to the gutter. With some sort of sadistic anti-Midas touch, professional boxing cheapens and devalues almost everything it comes into contact with it.

None of this is Damaen Kelly's fault, or the scores of other local men who have chosen this path. Boxing represents both a livelihood and a means of support for them. That is their choice and some, like McGuigan or Steve Collins, have been fortunate enough to build a good life out of it. But for every McGuigan or Collins there is a Ray Close or Eamonn Loughran, fighters whose careers stalled just when the big pay days beckoned.

Damaen Kelly arrived back in Belfast last Monday in optimistic mood, talking effusively about a hometown defence of his titles in May and the ambition of a world title contest before the year is out. For now he can take solace and pride from the fact that he has joined Rinty Monaghan, Freddie Caldwell, Hughie Russell and Dave Boy McAuley on the illustrious list of Irish flyweight champions.

Just now times are so good that the world of Lennox Lewis and Evander Holyfield must seem aeons away. But when people like Panos Eliades start to take an interest it's time to get a little worried. Damaen Kelly would do well to remember the old Northern axiom as he plots his course through professional boxing's treacherous seas - when you lie down with dogs, you can come up with fleas.