So how many of you stayed up until silly 'o' clock on Sunday morning to watch Ricky Hatton take on Floyd Mayweather, grinned stupidly when you heard a bunch of drunken Brits boo the American national anthem and then spent the next hour or so feeling slightly ashamed you had ever thought Hatton had a chance of beating the cocky Yank?
And so the long tradition of Great British sporting anti-climaxes continues.....
Of course, this was an heroic effort from the Mancunian warrior, he was brave and valiant, courageous and defiant, but Mayweather - as most experts had predicted on the other side of the Atlantic - was simply too good in defence and too quick on the counter for Hatton - who had only fought at welterweight once before in his career - to deal with.
So another plucky British defeat is mourned and celebrated, almost in equal measure. We have become masters at such matters, masking our immense disappointment with pride at the manner in which we have been vanquished.
No wonder we all went so mental when we won the Rugby World Cup four years ago and the Ashes two years later! We just aren't used to celebrating in this little stubborn island of ours, but we are good at turning defeats into victories of sorts. Just look at Dunkirk!
Nevertheless, having said all this with a hint of mockery in my voice - not that you can hear my voice and neither can I, just the tip tap of a keyboard and the cricket on the television in the background - we should be proud of Hatton.
He gave it his all, even if, with hindsight, he and the rest of us realised he was taking on the virtual impossible. You simply cannot step up a weight in boxing and beat the best in the world at that weight. Hatton is a world class fighter who perhaps fought and, at times troubled, arguably on the of the best boxers the sport has ever seen.
He does not deserve to be criticised for that, just as we should not snipe at a referee who, clearly on home soil, was under pressure to make sure Hatton did not get the sort of fight he wanted - a brawl on the ropes.
Hatton will be back and he will unify the light-welterweight division, the division he has dominated for so long. That is a remarkable achievement in itself and should be enough for him to secure the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award in a couple of years. That, after all, is what brought Joe Calazghe the prestigious (copyright of the BBC) award on Sunday night.
I was worried that Joe was going to be ignored this year. As I wrote in The Journal last week, boxing is not everyone's cup of tea, but the Welshman was, plain and simply, this year's outstanding athlete in this country.
He rivals Mayweather for the best pound-for-pound boxing mantle after more than a decade as a world champion and the only reason he does not have more international acclaim is that the other best boxers around his weight - the Jones' and the Hopkins' - have avoided fighting him because they knew they would lose.
Calazaghe has won all 44 of his professional fights and has been super-middleweight champion for a decade since beating a certain Chris Eubank. He will attempt to seal his legacy next year by moving up a weight before retirement as he searches more big scalps for his memory book. I just hope he has more success than Hatton - who was third at Sunday nights back slapping ceremony - with his bold ambition because he and British boxing deserves it!
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