Now Eubank has invited allegations that he is cashing in on boxing’s seamy side by flogging downloads of his second contest with Michael Watson in 1991 on a new website. Pay £10 and see Watson end up in a coma. This isn’t cricket. More like a snuff movie in silk shorts.

Call it macabre or voyeuristic if you want, but that bout 15 years ago was also the apotheosis of the careers of two great British sportsmen and deserves to be available. “It was the performance of my life and I know it was the performance of his,” Eubank said as he launched the website. That is true.

Those who revelled in the contest between Eubank and Watson were not blood-thirsty binge drinkers fresh from the afternoon shift at the abattoir. It was crystallised sporting drama. Fourteen million ITV viewers thought so, anyway.

Eubank is splitting the proceeds, 50-50, with Watson. “I went to see him at his mother’s home three weeks ago and he is extremely happy that people will at last be able to see this fight,” Eubank said.

And there is the nub of the debate. If the boxers are happy, why should they not reap the rewards of the terrible gamble every one of them takes? Those who deem it sick miss the point. There may be a few rubberneckers fast-forwarding to the eleventh round, when Eubank, from the threshold of defeat, threw the uppercut that reclaimed Watson for the ordinary. He caught his head on the bottom rope, spent 40 days in a coma and ended up partially paralysed. However, most viewers will simply want to relive one of the unmissable contests from the golden age of British middleweights.

And Watson is not dead. In fact, he has become an inspirational figure, completing the London Marathon despite being told that he would never walk again and backing a charity named The Forgiveness Project, which tells you all about his feelings for Eubank.

He even thinks “the accident”, as he calls it, did him some good. “I wasn’t a committed Christian then,” he said. “I was too concerned with flash cars, expensive clothes and girls.”

It is the glaring link between cause and consequence that will make some see this as the mercenary scam of an impoverished buffoon. But should we ban all footage from the 1968 FA Cup Final because Jeff Astle headed the ball during it and the coroner at his inquest 34 years later suggested that he had been a victim of “industrial disease”? If the link between leather balls and punchy footballers is ever proven, will you have to hide your West Bromwich Albion videos in the loft?

The issue of intent sets boxing apart, of course, but boxing bashers generally come from the wealthy middle-classes and people with conservatories should not throw stones. With the odd exception, such as Sugar Ray Leonard, boxers come from working-class backgrounds and have few opportunities. To ignore that is to ignore the fundamental reason the sport exists.

I spent an inordinate amount of time with the unfortunate while researching a book on Johnny Owen. Lupe Pintor, the man whose fists left Owen in a coma for 46 days before he died in 1980, was beaten by his father, battered with a machete and lived on the streets in Mexico City. He did not have the option to play badminton. “We were fighting for a better life,” he said of his bout with Owen.

There are plenty of crooks and charlatans who are in boxing for the money. The boxers often get fleeced and marked and the promoters get a fleet of Mercedes. But if you are going to profit from someone’s misfortune, make it your own. I hope Eubank and Watson make a packet.

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