Steve Bunce: As Dereck Chisora now knows, a boxer's best friend is the cornerman who knows when enough's enough

'I would never let a fighter of mine go on too long,' said his trainer Don Charles

When Sonny Liston put just under 80 stitches in Chuck Wepner’s face during their 1970 bloodbath he was asked if Wepner was the bravest man he had faced during his boxing career.

Liston, never one for long sentences, replied: “No, but his manager is.” The manager was Al Braverman and he had been in Wepner’s corner and seemingly oblivious to the massacre that he could have halted. “Stop it?” asked Braverman. “He would have killed me.” It was the ringside doctor, having elbowed his way to the corner, who finally put an end to the carnage.

On Saturday night at the ExCel a kindly man called Don Charles did call a halt to the Dereck Chisora and Tyson Fury fight, which was for the British and European heavyweight titles, and stopped Chisora, his fighter and friend, from going out for the 11th round. Braverman, arguably boxing’s most splendid conjurer of vulgarity, would have been disgusted with Saturday’s result.

“I knew there was something wrong when we got to the venue and again during the ring walk,” Charles said. “In the second he got a thumb in the eye and when he got back to the corner there was a sense of panic in his eyes; from about round five I was ready to throw the towel in.”

Chisora was cut for the first time in his career, 10 rounds down and his face was starting to swell from a steady beating when Charles decided to stop it. Chisora had said “no” a couple of times earlier, but at the end of the 10th he was in distress and no boxer should ever have to make the final decision in a moment of crisis.

“As a trainer you have to know when your fighter is beaten and I knew then – a boxer like Dereck never knows, he will just keep fighting,” added Charles. “When I started working with boxers I made a promise that I would never let a fighter of mine go on too long. I will give it a bit of time and then sit down and talk to Dereck, and we can make some decisions. I don’t know what happened in there, I have no idea.”

Charles had total control of Chisora’s corner on Saturday night but there are often conflicts between fighters, trainers and other voices that get too close to a lost cause, only adding to the unfolding disaster with their shameless bickering.

When Muhammad Ali lost to Larry Holmes in 1980 in Las Vegas in a fight that few wanted to see, there was a disgraceful crash of etiquette and sense in his corner. The great man was losing, his face was changing shape from the reluctant fists of Holmes, when the shoves, insults and threats started between Angelo Dundee and Drew “Bundini” Brown in his corner.

Dundee received word from Herbert Muhammad, Ali’s manager, to stop it. “That’s all,” Dundee said to the referee, but Brown grabbed Dundee and pleaded: “One more round.” The pair had been in the corner, side by side for nearly 20 years as part of Ali’s tight inner circle, but at that moment all pretence was over. “F*** you,” said Dundee. “I’m the chief second. The ballgame’s over.” It was, that is for sure.

Five years earlier it was at the end of the 14th round of another Ali fight that saw one of boxing’s most memorable and needed interventions. It was the “Thrilla in Manila” and Ali and his hated rival – nemesis, doesn’t quite capture the nastiness – Joe Frazier had fought each other to a disturbing standstill when the bell ended the 14th round. Both struggled to walk to their corners where they each presented their broken faces to the men in charge of their ring welfare. Dundee wanted to stop it but Eddie Futch, perhaps boxing’s finest trainer, pulled Frazier out first, then drew the great boxer’s head into his chest and whispered in his ear: “Sit down, son. It’s all over. No one will ever forget what you did here today.” Futch was right to pull him out and nobody has ever forgotten that fight.

At the ExCel, Charles did the right thing at the right time and it is perhaps a small mercy that the glorious but lunatic Braverman was nowhere near east London just after midnight on Sunday morning.