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´óÏó´«Ã½ Sport in Nuremberg

In boxing, you do what you have to do. Pleasing the crowd, fulfilling pre-fight boasts, they're nothing but peripheral concerns. Boxing's not a game, so you do what you have to do.

. No frills, no showboating, no flights of unnecessary machismo. He hit, he moved, he hit, he moved - all the way to the world heavyweight crown.

As the great Evander Holyfield said beforehand, the perfect tactics against the 7ft Russian lead to a "boring fight". Call it boring, call it boxing at its purest.

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in a duffle coat in a provincial German shopping mall. You could almost see it in his hair: "Where in the name of Muhammad Ali did it all go wrong?"

In common with , King appears to be lowering the voltage in tiny increments, labouring under the misapprehension that the general public won't notice. One day the shaven-headed promoter will kick back in King Towers, spark up a monster stogie and say to himself, "you know what Don, I think you got away with it".

may be a long way from Kinshasa, Zaire, where King made his name masterminding , or indeed Las Vegas, but never let it be said that the Germans don't love their boxing.

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´óÏó´«Ã½ Sport in Nuremberg

"People have said to me throughout the years, 'the heavyweight division, it's not like it used to be'. My plan, my mission is to return it to the old days..."

For a few seconds David Haye looked repentant, as if he had suddenly been forced to examine his own methods and didn't like what he'd seen. Then the confidence returned, a wry smile crossed his lips and he proclaimed: "There are no boundaries, no limits. As long as people are watching and boxing's on the map, that's all that counts."

The question had been posed by an elderly German journalist who wanted to know - like most of the Germans at the pre-fight news conference wanted to know - whether Haye thought he had crossed the boundaries of good taste in hyping his fight with .

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´óÏó´«Ã½ Sport in Nuremberg

once said that only when he touched would he believe he existed. So what if he'd seen him on TV, explained the American promoter, he'd seen on TV too, and that turned out to be fake.

The mythology surrounding the Russian, who defends his WBA heavyweight crown against in Nuremberg on Saturday, is as dense and matted as the fur that covers his 7ft frame.

While Haye has been busy boosting pay-per-view sales in the build-up to the fight, shouting his mouth off to anyone who'll listen, the 36-year-old Valuev, assured of his money up front, has been tucked away in his forest training camp just outside Berlin. Keeping schtum, rarely sighted, his legend becoming denser.

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´óÏó´«Ã½ Sport in Nuremberg

It's a question you'll hear being asked a lot over the coming days: "How is a little fella like him going to beat a giant like that?" It's what makes . The fact not even David Haye knows the answer elevates it to essential viewing.

"You can't train for someone who's 7ft tall, there's no 100% correct way to do it," Londoner Haye, who is challenging for Nikolay Valuev's WBA belt, told ´óÏó´«Ã½ Sport. "I've never had to do it before. I can only tell you after the fight whether it was the right thing or not."

Valuev stands nine inches taller than Haye and the Russian will enter the ring approximately 100lbs, or just over seven stone, heavier. . , said it was "like hitting a heavy bag in the gym - only heavier".

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