Mike Tyson was a ferocious hitter and a massive ear biter. Ear Biter?Chisora and Haye plumb new depths.

Dereck Chisora banged another nail into the coffin of the noble sport of boxing with his disgraceful antics leading up to and during his recent bout with Vitali Klitschko.

As a sport boxing is dying on it's feet.

The best remembered fights are those between Ali, Foreman and Fraser in the early 1970's. That period could truly be called the golden age of boxing.

For UK fight fans Barry McGuigan and Jim Watt also had a purple period. I remember listening on my portable radio to a scratchy 909 medium wave to listen to Watt's fights and they were enthralling.

The boxing heyday was Mike Tyson at his peak. This was a raging bull. A terrifying storm of destruction.

Tyson dismantled his opponents so easily and with such ferocity that you feared for anyone with the balls to get in the ring with him. Images of Tyson at the height of his powers still evoke memories of his powerful hitting and what seemed to be endless round one knockouts.

In fact Tyson was the youngest World Boxing Champion in 1988 aged 20 years and four months old winning 12 of his first 19 fights by way of first round knockout. That is some punching power.

In 1992 Tyson began to self destruct and was convicted of rape. He served three years of his six year sentence and began setting about regaining his world title which he lost in a shock 10th round knock out against Buster Douglas in 1990.

At that point Douglas was a 42-1 outsider and makes Chisoras' odds for last Saturdays fight positively respectable.

This is the point at which boxing began to lose its way and status as the greatest sporting contest on the planet.

When Tyson began chewing on Evander Holyfields ear in a desperate attempt to salvage something from his rematch for the world title in 1997 the noble art of boxing began it's plumbing of the depths.

There is no way back for boxing.

The governing bodies are split fractiously and there are more world titles than boxers worthy of the name to hold them. The two Klitschko brothers hold five titles between them WBO, WBA, WBC, IBO and IBF and as they have publicly stated they will never fight each other there will be no unification bout which is a truly risible state of affairs.

The public have lost their appetite for watching pondering goliaths beating each other up, or more concisely, beating on the little guy.

If Sky sports can not make pay per view work then no one can.

The days of Ali's shuffle and the magic dust that he sprinkled over the sport are long gone.