Sometimes sponsored by the Meat House (Bar and Grill), welterweight Mike Towell came in at 10st 6lbs 8oz, went out on a stretcher, and ended on the slab (swelling and bleeding to the brain).

Iron Mike molten; away like the cheese – skinny fries or chips with that? – in the 12 hours since his life support was switched off. And the dickie-bowed blokes in the Sporting Club’s hotel venue, who’d come for a full programme of tenderised beef, feeling nauseous at news of his death a day later.

Lissom limbs, lithe torso, tenderness of bared flesh as he steps onto the scales, barely maintaining that give nothing away-ness which goes without saying.

From pinched weeboyface to Presbyterian patriarch, now there’s a full beard on him. Acting up as he climbs into the ring, leveling with his opponent, listening-not-listening to the cheese wire voice of the referee, lecturing both before the bout begins.

Why not simply sacrifice him? Slit the throat of the white-socked ox and mix his blood with wine (Argentinian Shiraz Malbec £24 a bottle in the hotel bar). An answer comes: because he was smart as well as stubborn; because he might have won – the battle against Nature and his own.

Instead, the ritual casualty who shouldered our reality, brutish and short; and made himself its meat and drink.

But its ending with his untimely end: this was never fixed.