Sentimental claptrap pertaining to legitimised violence:

Appy polly logies for the long absence. I had pressing undersea business to attend to. It looks like I'm holding the fort here at Newt Towers - The London Prodigal is off net, and Dogtooth is in Wales, where the enlightening force of the blogosphere has yet to reach.
Speaking of Wales, I have just watched Joe Calzaghe beat Peter Manfredo in Cardiff. The event was a poignant one. Manfredo was a former contestant on Sly Stallone's boxing reality show The Contender: a product of television as much as of any boxing gym. He described himself before the match as 'the real Rocky', and believed he could win by sheer 'cojones'. Naturally he got taken apart. Manfredo is brash and young, aggressive in the ring and outside it. Calzaghe is camera shy, dignified, his face always tinged with a Latino Celtic melancholy even in victory, and for much of his career inexplicably obscure and unpopular. Manfredo catapulted to fame in a few weeks, while Calzaghe had to put in years at the top of his sport before getting any attention at all.
I watched the American Dream being taken apart: Calzaghe has a tight, cold style and Manfredo barely laid a finger on him. What surprised me was that I wasn't entirely happy about it. When Manfredo came out of the ring in the third round he must have known he was already lost, soon he was up against the ropes and offering no resistance as Calzaghe pummelled him round the head. The referee stopped the match, not because Manfredo showed signs of any serious hurt, but because he was so soundly outclassed. Many, including Frank Warren, feel that the match ended prematurely, but this in itself seems a suitably unromantic, tired, European ending for an American dreamer. Calzaghe has now won twenty fights as a WBO super-middleweight champion, making him the longest reigning title holder around, Manfredo will be heading home physically unharmed, but with his fairytale cut coldly short, after a fight he could never have hoped to have won. It is probably worth remembering that before Rocky there was On The Waterfront, and as Calzaghe said before the fight 'he's the contender, I'm the champion'.