The documentary purported to show how 43-year-old Dubliner Daniel Kinahan has now muscled in on boxing here in the UK and his native Ireland to become known and some say feared as the sport’s Mr Fixit. 

Not "fix it" in the sense of results being rigged - far from it - but in putting together lucrative deals for the sport’s leading stars who include the WBC world heavyweight champion Tyson Fury, who publicly declared his allegiance and gratitude to Kinahan for sealing the £200 million ($276 million/€228 million all-British unifying contest later this year between the Gypsy King and fellow titleholder Anthony Joshua, the 2012 Olympic champion.

So who is this mystery figure? Not much of a mystery really, most in sport have known about him for some time as boxing’s principal beneficiary. But is his influence totally beneficial?

Both leading British promoters and others in the business, including America’s Bob Arum, describe him as an "honourable man".

Yet Kinahan, 43, who has no criminal convictions, was named by the High Court in Dublin as a senior figure in an organised crime group, which is suspected to be involved in drug-trafficking operations and other offences worldwide.

Like most Panorama investigations it was heavy on innuendo and light on hard evidence although there is no doubt his association with boxing has not done the sport any good - except financially - with its unsavoury overtones.

The courts in Ireland have accepted the Kinahan organised crime group is involved in drug trafficking, money laundering and alleged gangland executions.

Mr Kinahan moved to Dubai in 2016 and police believe the Kinahan family is now running the drugs gang from there.

The alleged gangster helped set up boxing management business MTK Global , now based in Dubai, - but it was announced last year he was stepping away from the sport. 

However the company has now confirmed he still advises some of its boxers.

Panorama spoke to several boxing insiders who have expressed concerns about Mr Kinahan's power and influence in the sport.

Barry McGuigan said there was an element of terror around the Kinahan name.

"There is no doubt that there is an intimidation effect, there is no question about that," he said. "If we were to believe what we believe, this is a very dangerous man.

"Someone has got to look out for this sport. They really need to look at this situation very carefully, because it's bloody dangerous."

Now I am not saying that boxing is as clean as the proverbial whistle. But these days it is certainly not crooked. In some 60 years of covering the sport I can honestly say that I have never seen a fight that I believed to be fixed.

Oh yes, there were and still plenty of ridiculous mismatches with opponents brought in from overseas who were hopelessly inadequate if overpaid fodders either for existing champions or those being nurtured towards titles, with the inevitable result.

And there has certainly been some poor judging in the pro sport, although this has not been through bribery but pure incompetence. Olympic boxing is another matter - as has been shown on several occasions - and despite massive reorganisation and clear out by the reformed International Boxing Association, the sport's status within the Games remains under threat.

That has nothing to do with the pummelling from Panorama.

I’ve never met Mr Kinahan and have no idea whether the charges laid against him of running a mafia style organisation are true. But he has no criminal record, has never been charged with any crime and never appeared in court. Neither does he deny his association with boxing, where the allegation, according to Panorama and the Irish press, is that the huge amounts of money he invests in boxing to help arrange big fights, where boxers are paid extraordinarily large sums, in fact is being laundered from drugs and other illegal activities. 

Whether this is so or not, is hearsay. His detractors say he has no official license to act as an advisor to top boxes. But the fact is he doesn’t need one. AS British Boxing Board of Control secretary Robert Smith points out, anyone can give advice, particularly of a financial nature, to a boxer: whether it is Mr Kinahan, Richard Branson, Lord Sugar, Rishi Sunak or Uncle Tom Cobleigh.

As I have said there is plenty of support from fighters who are or have been associated with MTK. Not least Tyson Fury (who incidentally is not licensed in the UK) or former double world champion Amir Khan, the Olympic silver medallist, who tweeted: "I've known Daniel for some time. I have huge respect for what he's doing in boxing.

"We need people like Dan to keep the sport alive. One of the nicest guys I've met."

There are dozens more such testimonies, but whether or not they can be taken at face value is of course a matter of opinion.

An iconic ex world champion who speaks out vigorously against Kinahan’s influence is McGuigan, who claims his fellow Irishman has poached fighters from him offering huge financial inducements. Among them, he maintains, is his own one-time protégé Carl Frampton, who bids to become Ireland’s first three weight world champion when he meets American WBO super featherweight title holder Jamel Herring in London on February 27.

McGuigan reckons he and his family have received death threats: "You don’t have to tell me that I should be scared.

"I have lived through the troubles. This is nothing compare to that."

Of course boxing has been smeared by its links to what an Irish judge called the leader of one of Europe’s criminal cartels.

But show me a major sport these days which is not enmeshed by some sort of wrongdoing.

Football? How many foreign owners of Premiership League clubs would emerge unscathed from similar probes into their backgrounds, their ownership?

FIFA has become a well-established as a synonym for corruption. How did Qatar come to nick the next World Cup, by the way? Let’s see if Panorama can find out the truth about that bit of intrigue.

Athletics? Don’t make me laugh. The sport has been infested by drugs cheats to the extent that seeing may not be believing

Rugby? Don’t mention the word Saracens around Twickenham.

Cricket? How many matches have been fixed is unlikely ever to be known, with numerous players sent to jail.

Horse racing? The week before Panorama's revelations about boxing the main item on the back page of the Sunday Times was about alleged corruption and doping.

I wouldn’t mind betting there are more pulled horses than they ever have been pulled punches in boxing.

Let’s not forget the Olympics. Just three little words - S alt Lake City - still send shudders through the corridors of the International Olympic Committee headquarters in Lausanne.

But getting back to boxing, I said earlier that I had never seen a fight I considered to be fraudulently fixed. But I do know of one where an attempt was made to do so. 

Back in the 1960s a Blackpool promoter, the late Lawrie Lewis, admitted to a group of us over a few drinks that had tried to bribe an American boxer named Jim Fletcher to "take a dive" against the former British heavyweight champion from Blackpool, in London. Lewis had not realised just how dangerous Fletcher was when the match was made. So he revealed he asked the San Franciscan what it will take for him to lose to London.

Big Jim’s answer was swiftly delivered, a thunderous left hook which sent London spiralling almost the length of the Golden Mile.

Yet one blatant dive I saw involved Brian London. And that was admitted by the fighter himself when he was matched at Earls Court with Muhammad Ali. London went down, and stayed down in the third round. No-one had ordered him to do so.

Ali gently messed him around for two rounds and then unleashed a two-fisted barrage which missed London’s jaw by fractions. 

London theatrically collapsed, opening one eye to look to the referee as he was counted out. As they say in the game he "swallowed it". My colleague Colin Hart, who was sitting close to London’s corner at the start, swears he heard the Briton’s knees knocking before the first bell. The next morning the papers carried a photo of London purchasing a ticket at Euston station for the rail journey home to Blackpool. The sign above the ticket office read "second class".

Some years later, when London was told was told that Ali was seriously ill with Parkinson’s, he replied: "Don’t blame me - I never laid a glove on him."

Incidentally if you want to know how boxing beat the real Mob in the United States the man responsible was no less than Ali. It was said that whoever ran the world heavyweight champion ran Boxing. The mafia owned Sonny Liston but made a serious mistake when they agreed to let him fight Ali in 1964, despite being convinced the ogre-like Liston would destroy him. But Ali did not read the script and as he said "shook up the world".

And the days of Blinky Palermo, Frankie Carbo, et al and the mafia’s influence on boxing were gone for good.