Dirty fans - or why I'm a Klitschko guy tonight

Tonight I'm going to watch the world heavyweight title unification fight between Wladimir Klitschko and David Haye.

I'm between the chairs here. I do like Klitschko more as a person (by all accounts he seems a nice guy, is big in charity projects for kids, and I kinda like big, stoic guys - like you wouldn't have guessed). What I didn't like was Klitschko punning on Haye's name, turning it into, yeah, "gay".

Thanks, Wladimir. Way to make me go "thanks for that piece of homophobia, Wladimir, your gay fans pay for your tickets and merchandise too, you know."

David Haye is a bit of as loudmouth, but without the personality of Ali (I read he called his son Cassius - yeah, there's a Cassius Haye growing up, nevermind that Ali disowned that name as his "slave name" - he just couldn't resist. David, that is).

Arguably, Haye's almost hysterically claiming he'll do nothing that Klitschko wants him to do seems pretty juvenile to me. But all that can be discounted as "trying to sell tickets". Nothing sells more tickets than us, the audience, believing that those modern gladiators actually do hate each other.

So, I'm between chairs, as I said. Haye is the more exciting and interesting boxer by far. And he's right, Wladimir is "robotic" and uninspired and thanks to the Klitschkos, heavyweight boxing has never been so dull.

So, I was watching the weigh-in on BBC just now. Here's the video.

If you listen to the end, you'll hear a song. A song you'll hear anytime a British team/sportsperson is facing a German opponent. You can make out the words towards the end: "Destroy the dam, destroy the dam, destroy it."

This would be slightly puzzling (for me as a German it was), before I did some research.

It's the Dam Buster Song, a song from the film The Dam Busters, which in turn is inspired by Operation Chastise, the bombing of a number of German dams and subsequent large-scale flooding that killed almost two thousand people, among them Soviet forced labourers, but most definitely women and children and civilians - and strategically speaking, not very efficient, either, let alone a "death blow" to the Third Reich's war economy.

Let's really savour that thought - English hooligans and "fans" sing a song glorifying the death of civilians WHENEVER they face a German opponent. It can be football, or boxing (nevermind that the Klitschkos are Ukrainian), or really anything - and a horde of asshole fuckwits shows up, singing "destroy the dam! Destroy it!"

I'm from the area that was flooded. My family was subjected to aerial bombing - both in Dresden (father's side) and in the Ruhr area (mother's side).

And I can't think of anything similar that the Germans would do. We don't have a "Dunkirk" song (then again, Dunkirk involved no civilians), or a "Blitz" song.

I can see the uproar if we HAD a Blitz song and dared so much as think of singing it. The British media would be on that like a pack of hellhounds.

It's this fuckwittery of David Haye's fans that makes me want that Klitschko wins tonight. (It won't happen, Haye is an amazing boxer, and he bought down bigger guys.) But I won't be able to cheer him on for that, like I can't cheer on the English football team, either - regardless of their opponent. I'll be able to cheer for them on the day those fucknuts stop singing about civilians getting bombed and drowned.

This is the effect of dirty fans.