Locker Room: Nothing tests the reflex for blind patriotism quite like boxing. The game is too compelling, the stories too irresistible. Even when you sit swaddled in the Tricolour you can't help noting the qualities of the guy sat in the other corner. The quality of the boxing brotherhood is such that there are few practitioners to whom you would begrudge a little success.

Watching Bernard Dunne emerge on Saturday night from a blood-spattered bout and having his arm raised by a referee whose shirt suggested he'd been involved in a knife fight, it was tempting to get sucked into the chorusing of olé, olé, olé which signified that, for a nation of sports-event junkies, Dunne has arrived as a phenomenon.

Dunne is easy to like and the superbantamweight division is one of those televisually appealing categories. The fighters step through the ropes regularly and they dole out and receive more punches in a night than a heavyweight might process in half a career.

In the cheery aftermath on Saturday night, it was only natural to talk about the next step for Bernard Dunne. His path has veered somewhat since his return home from LA, but once again he's on the cusp of a world title fight. Last week you would have said that fight would probably be against Michael Hunter, the guy who controversially beat Saturday's prey, Esham Pickering, for the EBU superbantamweight title last October. This morning it's a different scenario.

If the Point Depot is an odd trading post for a business which belongs in Vegas or Madison Square Garden, then Hartlepool seems a bizarre place for anyone to wind up fighting for a world title. It's Hunter's hometown, though, and on Friday night it was where Steve Molitor, a Canadian pug of no mean talent, found himself. Molitor was supposed to fight in Johannesburg in September but the fight fell through. So to Hartlepool, where Molitor mercilessly dropped the local boy in the fifth.

There are some parallels between the stories of Steve Molitor and Bernard Dunne. Born within a couple of months of each other in 1980, they've even met once in the ring. Nine years ago, on a July night in the National Stadium, Molitor was part of a Canadian amateur team who surprisingly lost to the Irish in an epic night of amateur boxing. The second flyweight bout of the evening saw Bernard Dunne, then just a curiosity as the son of the former light-flyweight champion, Brendan, step in and use his astonishing defence to overwhelm an enthusiastic young kid called Steve Molitor.

They took a last glance at each other afterwards and set off on their paths. Neither qualified to represent his country at the Sydney Olympics, and their careers have been at roughly the same places since.

Saturday was Bernard Dunne's 22nd bout, one away, it is hoped, from a world title. On Friday in Hartlepool, Molitor fought his 23rd pro fight and picked up the vacant IBF crown.

Molitor is a southpaw who retails a good line in heavy and varied punches. Against Hunter, a tricky, tough opponent, Molitor offered bundles of sharp right-lefts, throwing in the odd left uppercut or hook to keep Hunter thinking. By the time Molitor had put Hunter down for the first time in the fourth round, he had quietened the raucous home crowd in the Borough Hall.

Dunne became a boxer because of his Dad. Molitor became a boxer because of the influence of his older brother Jeremy, who once upon a time fought as a welterweight and enjoyed some success at the business. Jeremy won a Commonwealth gold medal in 1998, a silver at the Pan-Am Games in Winnipeg a year later.

Jeremy made the honour roll of the Mayor of Sarnia in southwest Ontario after winning the gold at the Commonwealth Games. A hand injury kept him from the Sydney Olympics, but hey.

When Steve Molitor was nine years old he followed Jeremy into a gym in Sarnia and fell in love, just as his brother had. Classic story. Steve was two and a half years younger, rail-thin and plagued by poor eyesight and unfashionable public health spectacles.

The gym was like a self-respect superstore: the more time you spent the more confidence you felt. The heat and the sweat and the thud thud thud percussion on the bags. The boys worked with a trainer called Silvio Fox and fought their way to a handful of Canadian amateur titles. For 10 happy years the Molitor brothers lived and trained together, travelled together and competed on the same bills together.

Even though Steve suffered the Olympic setback in 2000, it was Jeremy's career which soured more comprehensively soon after. He suffered a tough loss in the spring of 2001 which set him down the rankings for a shot at a national title. He was surrounded, though, by the sort of lowlife who can sometimes set up residence as parasites on a fighter's back. He began frequenting bookmakers' offices and shoving white powder up his nose. His fall was quick.

In May the following year, the body of his girlfriend, Jessica Nethery, was found in a locked car in a parking garage in Sarnia. It was a brutal end to a bad, three-year relationship which had run in parallel with Jeremy's fall from contender to rock bottom. A couple of days before Christmas that year Jeremy went down for second-degree murder.

What can you say or understand about the fault lines which spread out from such a tragedy, the lines which divide every touched life in two? Before and after. Jeremy Molitor's brother Steve wasn't the victim, he wasn't family to the victim. He was the perpetrator's brother and, as he has said, he loves that brother more than life itself.

In Millhaven maximum-security prison, Jeremy Molitor has been cut off from the hangers-on, the gambling, the powder, the life. His record as a prisoner is such that he was quickly approved for family visits. The new superbantamweight champion of the world, Steve Molitor, spends weekends with his brother inside a trailer on the prison grounds. He makes no excuses for his brother. He expresses deep regret for the family of Jessica Nethery. He makes those journeys though.

On those weekends they erase the present and the pain. They banish the images of the dogs and the screws and the rolls of wire and the muscled, tattooed cons and they get back to the basics. They train together like demons, pouring their blood, sweat and tears into that time together. There's love there, and when they push themselves hard it comes without having to be spoken of.

That's Steve Molitor. The hardship and hurt of the last few years has made him into a great fighter. Sometime soon he'll have to make a decision about whether he wants to fight a defence against a guy called Bernard Dunne who grew up in Neilstown and brings to the place the sort of credit which the brothers once brought to Sarnia.

On the occasions when Steve Molitor has fought in England over the past few years, he has become accustomed to the sound of raucous booing as he enters the ring with the Canadian flag. He's been through worse though.

What an occasion it would be to see him reunited between ropes in Dublin with Bernard Dunne and for Molitor to be spared the dumb catcalls as he entered.

The dark trade finds nobility in the strangest places.