Compiled by NIALL KIELY

This Irish Tyson has real bite

FOR SUCH a huge man, Tyson Fury slipped deftly under the public radar last weekend when he easily won what had seemed likely to be a difficult fight for the British and Commonwealth heavyweight titles at Wembley.

It helped, of course, that Fury’s €210,000 fight coincided with the Las Vegas bout in which Britain’s Amir Khan collected some €700,000 for seeing off Zab Judah, adding the IBF 10st belt to the WBA title he already held.

Khan, now 24, has been learning ringcraft in the Wildcard gym of Freddie Roach, and followed the latter’s masterful strategy in hammering a 33-year-old as clearly on the way down as Khan is now determinedly in the ascendant.

His previous defence was against Irishman Paul McCloskey, in Manchester last spring, and he’s now looking to set up a fight with Floyd Mayweather Jnr that would be box-office platinum in the lead-up to next year’s Olympics in London.

Khan may even thieve the limelight from his gym-mate in Vegas, Manny Pacquiao, a man Mayweather clearly doesn’t fancy fighting.

Back at the Manchester ranch, meanwhile, even by the doubtful standards of boxing hyperbole, you really couldn’t make Tyson Fury up.

“I’ve got Irish descent. I was born in Manchester, but I’m not Irish or English, I’m a gypsy,” the 22-year-old said before his bout against Zimbabwea-born Dereck Chisora last weekend.

It was thought before the fight that the 6ft Chisora (27), who clocked in at a career-record 18st 9lb and thus out-weighed his rival, might be too rough a mullacker for a callow, 6ft 9in Fury.

Chisora’s no daw, having twice been matched against Wladimir Klitschko in recent months only to lose both fights when the Ukrainian pulled out with injuries.

No shrinking violet either, our Dereck, having served a five-month ban last year for biting Paul Butlin’s ear in the ring, an offence for which he volunteered the risible but markedly original apologia: “I was bored.”

A shrewd promoter, Mick Hennessy, will keep Fury well away from the tough Klitschko brothers while he learns his trade in a series of prime-time, free-to-air fights to build mass appeal (Fury vs Chisora was on Channel Five terrestrial).

And they’ve already got the estimable PR heavyweight Max Clifford in their corner.

The backstory will sell itself. Fury was named after Mike Tyson by his father, a former bare-knuckle fighter known as Gypsy John who also lost a British heavyweight eliminator to Henry Akinwande 20 years ago. Fury pére is now serving a jail term after a car-auction fight in which another man lost an eye.

Next up, if it goes to plan, they’ll pack out Belfast’s King’s Hall for what could be an Irish title fight against the 40-year-old local brawler, Martin Rogan.

The Fury camp will use his Irish background to make that happen.

“I’m proud of what I am, and that’s a traveller,” young Tyson told the Indy’s Alan Hubbard this month.

“I’ll tell you what makes a traveller: you’re born one, like you’re born black.”

Liszt, Leinster fans, and learn to tell the profound from picaresque

THE MORE anal-retentive among Leinster supporters have doubtless already booked flights or ferries for their Heineken Cup pool opener against Montpellier on November 12th.

The more culturally sophisticated followers (yes, I know, bracketing Leinster folk and culture is an oxymoronic minefield: but bear with me) may also be aware by now that we’re into the 200th anniversary of Franz Liszt.

And as the flaneurs of Donnybrook promenade in the south of France, they might well muse on the great pianist’s path as a topical metaphor for Leinster’s pullulating peregrination.

With Liszt, fortunately for our contemporary knowledge, what happened on tour did not stay on tour. When he hit Montpellier in 1844 to give one of the remarkably popular solo recitals which he pioneered, he was of an age (33) with some of Leinster’s finest and also spent much of his time fighting off the aristo groupies who plagued him.

I thought of Liszt during the British Open golf as Miguel Angel Jimenez did his golf-with-a-stogie routine. The giant of 19th-century music also savoured a decent cigar, and it was while smoking a good cheroot during his Montpellier stopover that Liszt outlined a philosophy that for me remains his apotheosis.

It occurred, history tells us, when the pianist was reproved by a local aficionado for what the listener felt was a flash, even vulgar, playing of the Bach Prelude and Fugue in A minor.

And so he patiently gave three renditions: an unadorned version, as Bach would have wanted; then in a “more modern”, picturesque manner. And finally, cigar in mouth, his showman’s virtuoso approach: “The way I would play it for the public – to astonish, as a charlatan.”

He was honest to a fault, the spoiled priest Liszt, and utterly clear on the difference between High Art and entertaining a paying audience: he readily separated profound from performance picaresque.

Rather reminds me of the Leinster iteration: from the flash and empty charlatans of the late 1990s and early Noughties to the solid achievement of recent years.

Just a thought for Leinsterites, as they get all Brahms and Liszt under a wintry Montpellier sun.

The Final Straw Hearts soar in Montevideo

NEARLY TWO decades ago, in Barcelona, I met a remarkable woman from Uruguay. That she was also remarkably beautiful, with cafe au lait skin of gossamer perfection and had a warm earthiness about her, became near incidental when she talked of her life.

We were both in Barca for a World Cup game. I was working, but free of any Sunday-paper deadline.

She’d been travelling on a tightwire budget in Europe, ending up in Spain for the futbol; Uruguayans have a copperfastened soccer passion.

Last weekend’s Copa America win will have lifted hearts in Montevideo, even if the standard of fare at the tournament has seen a goal drought and apprehensions that heavily coached “anti-futbol” won the day.

Not that the Uruguayans will care a jot, having added a record 15th Copa to their World Cup semi in South Africa.

Their history has taught them to be cautious in Fray Bentosland, and Uruguayan captain Diego Lugano last week said only: “Perhaps it’s become harder to get good results against us.”

And World Cup qualifying from Conmebol’s group of nine will now fascinate.

Four go through, a fifth will play-off and Brazil are already there as hosts.

There is no more South American cannon fodder. Venezuela once were whipping boys, but have reached the last four in Copa in both of the most recent tournaments – something Brazil and Argentina failed to do this month – and Copa performances have assured all other former minnows.

Peru have come on, Chile were delightful; and no one likes playing away at altitude in Ecuador or Bolivia.

The Uruguayan hand is everywhere, particularly the long-grind handiwork of one Sergio Markarian.

He managed an unfancied Peru to the semi in Argentina; he mentored Uruguay’s coach, Oscar Washington Tabárez, as a player, and Markarian is also credited with the stealthy rise of Paraguay, having coached them at the 1992 Olympics.

My Uruguayan beauty in Barcelona? She was flying home that week to be met at the airport by her jailers.

The right-wing regime had imprisoned her parents, she explained, until she gave herself up.

Her crime: membership of her teachers’ trade union.

She shrugged: " Así es la vida."

When F1 was a man's game

IDLE TALK of McLaren’s Lewis Hamilton or Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso whittling down what appears an insurmountable Formula 1 lead by Sebastian Vettel of Red Bull could be just that. Or perhaps not.

A fortnight can be a lingering age in motor racing.

Already, fans desirous of a down-to-the-wire finish are harking back in hope to 1976.

We forget perhaps that F1 was then a criminally dangerous sport, and nearly claimed the life of the sublime and über-courageous Niki Lauda that year.

He had a handy, 35-point lead over the playboyish James Hunt, a shagaholic who’d have found little irony in Mike Myers’ Austin Powers, but Lauda then had a quite horrific crash at the Nürburgring. He missed three races before an heroic return, and by then Hunt was closing on him.

Yet the Englishman won the 1976 title by a solitary point, and only then because Lauda had to withdraw on the eve of that year’s final race in Japan – because the still-recuperating Austrian could not control the streaming tear duct of his injured eye.

For want of a nail . . .

End of Ming dynasty

IT’S RARE for a sportsman’s retirement to have international knock-on, but when Chinese basketballer Yao Ming ended an eight-year career this month, not just fans of the Houston Rockets were doleful.

His 7ft 6in height was both the making and breaking of him, as brittle-bone injuries made him stop.

Neither the NBA nor either government will easily replicate his impact off the court.

The affable 30-year-old, fairly fluent in English and adored by Americans, fanned extraordinary coverage of NBA games in the lucrative Chinese market.

And he was a consummate ambassador for his country.

No tall tale, his one.