If you can control it it can cook for you it can heat your house

If you can control it, it can cook for you; it can heat your house. If you can't control it, it will burn everything around you and destroy you. Not even Iron Mike is immune, as witness the famous film clip of the young Tyson reduced to tears, being cuddled and comforted by his then-trainer Teddy Atlas before an amateur fight.Cus D'Amato, Tyson's original mentor, offered a much-quoted reflection on the subject "Fear is your best friend, and your worst enemy," he said "It's like fire. Mike Spinks, like Bruno a fine and courageous performer, was reduced to a similar state of frozen apprehension before going out to lose to Tyson in 91 seconds, and Floyd Patterson, a two-time heavyweight champion who was at the Las Vegas ringside, has talked vividly of the trance-like state to which nerves reduced him before being knocked out in a round by Sonny Liston. Most of the time, they come through their inner crisis, but occasionally they fail spectacularly.

Bruno must now be added to that unhappy list, but he is in distinguished company.Kingfish Levinsky once locked himself in the dressing-room toilet and refused to emerge to fight Joe Louis, and Max Baer, a former champion, described how his legs refused to function when he was summoned on the same mission. But they are also men, subject to the same fears and concerns as the rest of us, and their success depends on coping with and conquering those dark forces. Anyone who enters a ring, from six-rounds level to championship class, is a hero. He was a man consumed by apprehension, battered by self-doubts which he struggled to dispel by crossing himself more times in those few minutes than Mother Teresa does in an average week.Let there be no suggestion of cowardice as we lesser men understand the term. Injured pride is a bad and dangerous motivation, yet it can only be that which would drive Bruno back into the ring. Maybe, as he ponders his future in the next few weeks, he should reflect on the words of Larry Holmes, one of his most distinguished predecessors as WBC heavyweight champion, who is still fighting at 46: "Show me the man who says he ain't fighting for money, and I'll show you a fool." Bruno has made his money, and despite the carefully fostered public image, he is no fool. When the wounds have healed and the cheque has cleared, the urge to redeem himself will grow stronger, gnawing away at his self- esteem.

But it is a poison with a simple antidote: all he has to do is watch the video of his long walk from the dressing-room to the ring to face Tyson, and ask whether he seriously wants to put himself again through the mental torment he was experiencing then. Before adding in the $6m he was paid for last week's third-round defeat, he was among the highest earners in British sport, so his reluctance to announce his immediate retirement has nothing to do with financial imperatives. There is no justification - professional, sporting, financial or personal - for allowing or encouraging this most likeable of men to submit himself to the possibility of further public humiliation of the type Mike Tyson inflicted on him in the MGM Grand Garden arena. It was the understandable reaction of a man who knew that he had failed to do himself justice on the biggest night of his life, but it must fill with apprehension those who genuinely care about his welfare or about the validity of boxing as a sport. As Bayern knocked in their fifth, Motty noticed that "Frank Clark is almost in a no-win situation" Just like his namesake It was not a good week to be Frank.. EVEN before the blood had ceased to trickle down his cheek from the inch-long slit Mike Tyson had carved open above his left eye last Saturday night, Frank Bruno was talking of fighting again. Who gives a toss what Frances Edmonds and Nigel Havers think about Jackie Stewart? Channel 4 is capable of challenging and unusual sports coverage - all the more reason why this bad joke of a programme should have been strangled at birth.The only decent live action for the dishless was Nottingham Forest v Bayern Munich (BBC1), with John Motson behind the mike.