Paranoid in Hamburg
Hamburg
American broadcaster has gone for the tagline 'The Talk Ends Now'; has gone for 'The War'. Personally, I would have plumped for 'Paranoia': the air was thick with it at the final pre-fight news call on Wednesday.
There is a great scene in the , which kicks off with the line: "In Vegas, everybody's gotta watch everybody else." And that is what it was like in the rather more sanitised surroundings of the Mercedez-Benz showroom in Hamburg.
, members of Klitschko's camp were watching members of Haye's camp, tracksuited men were posted on balconies, men in plain clothes were spying from behind ring posts. No all-seeing "eye-in-the-sky" but this journalist was watching it all.
One Haye insider told me he locked eyes with Wladimir's older brother, Vitali, and was unable to break the stare. In a sport of psychological inches, it would have represented a defeat, at least in this insider's mind. "How did you leave it?" I asked. "I raised an eyebrow and he eventually looked away." Victory! At last...