Final bell after decades covering the fight game

FOR around 30 years this column has had a home on the pages of the Daily Star.

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Sadly it is time to say goodbye. It is with a heavy heart I write that this is the last Boxing Clever.

Yet it is something of an honour to bring down the curtain on what has been one of the longest-running national newspaper columns.

Boxing has always been - and hopefully will remain - hugely important to the Star. This column has been so instrumental in that.

My previous sports editor, Howard Wheatcroft, told me how key this sport is to its readers, which was music to my ears when he appointed me as boxing correspondent and then author of this column.