Tyson Fury wins heavyweight contest against Schwartz.

Tyson Fury wins heavyweight contest against German Tom Schwarz.

In one of the great gambling casinos of the world, a man from Manchester won his own personal game of roulette against a German prizefighter by the name of Tom Schwarz. Las Vegas has had more than its fair share of celebrity and showbiz glamour over the years. This time though a certain Tyson Fury did a remarkable impersonation of Rocky's Apollo Creed and suddenly the whole ring was transformed into a sea of red, white and blue stars and stripes. It was wonderfully gaudy, outlandish and very American.

But by the end of the second round of this bruising and painfully brief world heavyweight dust up, some of us were beginning to think of this fight as the ultimate mismatch. On the one hand there was a very colourful British boxer with an alarming tendency for saying the wrong thing at the wrong time and on the other a German punch bag with all the vulnerability of a six year old child who fears that his parents had forgotten their birthday. It was, needless to say, all over in a flash. Crash, bang, wallop and Schwarz was out on the canvas, staggering, wobbling and ready for an early night nursing his bleeding eyes and face.

The truth though is that Tyson Fury had posted another announcement to the rest of the boxing world that he means business and isn't messing around. Fury has all the necessary ingredients to be one of the sport's most respected fighters of all time. He's brash, outrageous, completely lacking in any kind of diplomacy, tough as old boots, brutal, unashamedly aggressive, some would say arrogantly abrasive and merciless in his punishment of any opponent who drops either their guard or glove.

Some of us still fondly remember the great and good of British boxing from days of yesteryear. There was the lovably memorable Henry Cooper or our 'Enery who once left Cassius Clay, later to become Muhammad Ali, gasping at thin air and curled up on a Wembley canvas like the proverbial hedgehog, a man who, albeit temporarily, believed that he'd got the better of a man who would later grace some of boxing's finest arenas.

Then there was the endearingly big hearted and admittedly thick waisted Joe Bugner, a Hungarian bulldozer who would batter his opponents into submission because they quite obviously deserved it. Bugner once came up against Cooper and it wasn't pretty. But Bugner had ring craft, stage craft and never flinched away from those boxers who were supposed to present the most daunting threat. He rumbled and rolled with the punches and occasionally attracted both the comics and music hall jokers while never losing any of his dignity.

During the 1980s a lovely man by the name of Frank Bruno eventually fell from grace and then vanished in an embarrassing puff of smoke. Bruno was big and beautifully proportioned, all muscular grace and innate boxing skills. For a while he became one of Britain's housewives favourites, an adorable entertainer, supremely humorous, charming in the extreme, delightful box office, foolhardy and foolish at times but notably sensitive and gullible at others.

Bruno though was a 1980s sporting microcosm. Fame, greatness and wealth seemed to be thrust upon him very quickly before reality knocked him out remorselessly with the most wicked punch. Vital fights were won on the biggest of boxing nights but then fights were lost and that must have hurt. Soon Bruno found himself on the downward spiral and heading for the basement of anonymity.

Suddenly, the huge affection and esteem he was held in by mums, grandmothers and children began to ebb away before Bruno hit rock bottom. Soon he was visited by chronic mental health issues, depression set in with a vengeance and before you could blink Bruno was out on his own wondering sadly if it had all been worth all that worry and aggravation.

In more recent years there was Lennox Lewis whose star once shone in the ascendant before bowing out of the big time. Lewis was Canadian which would suggest that he had the physique and power of a lumberjack but here was a man who was determined to make his millions in no time  at all before just leaving out of the tradesman's entrance without so much as wink or shrug. Lewis had flair, showmanship and undoubted class but not perhaps the longevity of his predecessors.

And so amid the increasingly tasteless surroundings of a Las Vegas boxing ring, Tyson Fury detained Tom Schwarz for only two rounds. There were the warlike, red, white and blue, air raid searchlights swaying around the ring as if something infinitely more unsavoury was about to happen. Then there were the Churchillian speeches, the sinister undertone of the whole occasion and still Fury lived up to his surname.

By the first minute of the first round Fury was all show, bravado and impudence, dancing and prancing, walking and taunting, holding up one insolent and disrespectful fist in the air, challenging and beckoning his German opponent towards him rather like a man who should have settled his  differences with Schwarz in a back alley.

Firstly there were the cruel jabs, the destructive body blows to the midriff, the rabbit punches to the head, the lethal hooks that connected with the head and could almost be heard in Atlanta. Fury kept walking, then skipping quite happily. probing for Schwarz weak points, cautious and cagey for much of the fight but quite content for Schwarz to simply tire under a vicious bombardment of punches.

Occasionally Schwarz did rock Fury back on unsteady feet but this was just a token gesture. With the punters of Las Vegas now baying for blood, this was turning into private war without the guns. Fury swung his arm around with the kind of windmilling action that a certain Mick Channon from Southampton would produce as a footballing centre forward during the 1970s. Then the Manchester mean and moody boxing machine fired another damaging artillery of punches. Ultimately there were the comprehensive haymakers that would eventually send Schwarz toppling to the floor.

After a brief intervention from an understandably concerned referee in the second round, Schwarz was checked, the savage ambush had been completed and Fury had won yet another extremely important world heavyweight fight as if it had  just been another day at the office. Schwarz winced as a torrent of blood came pouring down reddened cheeks before shuffling awkwardly for a minute or two, then realising where he was and what he was supposed to be doing. Then defeat came crashing in and the realisation that it was indeed Goodnight Vienna although this was Las Vegas.

Meanwhile back in London one Anthony Joshua is waiting patiently for Tyson Fury perhaps questioning the legitimacy of Fury's achievement. Here are two very finely balanced heavyweights who simply want to inflict something horrible on each other,  just desperate to put each other out of their misery. But the future of British boxing has much to offer and has rarely been healthier if that can ever be the case in boxing. But the man with the American stars and stripes on his hat and coat wants more of the same and there can be no more intriguing sight than that of a hungry heavyweight boxer who just believes that he can't be beaten. Fury and ferocity at the same time perhaps.