BBC Panorama programme, graphically headlined
Boxing and the Mob must have thought the old noble art - if it was ever thus - was being dragged back into the dark days, like those across the Atlantic from the 20s into the mid-60s, when the fight game was run and ruled by Mafioso characters whose surnames invariably ended in vowels.
The documentary purported to show how 43-year-old Dubliner Daniel Kinahan has now muscled in on boxing here in the UK and his native Ireland to become known and some say feared as the sport’s Mr Fixit.
Not fix it in the sense of results being rigged - far from it - but in putting together lucrative deals for the sport’s leading stars who include the WBC world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, who publicly declared his allegiance and gratitude to Kinahan for sealing the £200 million ($276 million/€228 million all-British unifying contest later this year between the Gypsy King and fellow titleholder Anthony Joshua, the 2012 Olympic champion.
âMy main observation [on viewing the fake news content] is it is interesting to see the expense that would have been involved in putting forward oneâs view or criticisms of the State and the Garda SÃochána.
âAs I say, (people) are quite entitled to criticise us and ask questions of us, but that is fascinating in terms of the extent to which these particular individuals have the capacity to resource that particular way of presenting their case.â
The media event Mr OâDriscoll was addressing was being held on the day before the fifth anniversary of an attack on Dubliner Daniel Kinahan and his associates at a boxing match weigh-in at the Regency Hotel, north Dublin, during which his associate David Byrne (34) was killed and others were wounded, though Kinahan escaped uninjured.