It was the former fight promoter Mickey Duff who first coined the phrase "If you want loyalty, buy a dog." In the past few years it has also been running through the mind frequently of his successor as Britain’s leading boxing impresario, Frank Warren. First Naseem Hamed left him after winning a world title, then Ricky Hatton, followed by Joe Calzaghe - and now Amir Khan.

"Loyalty is what they f*** you" with is another phrase you will often hear not only in boxing but in all other walks of sport - and life, the media industry being no exception.

Football has also observed its share of something that seems to be increasingly endemic. Only recently we had the case of Burnley having their idolised manager Owen Coyle walk out on them to join near Lancashire neighbours Bolton. And how many athletes and swimmers have cut themselves off from the coaches who discovered and nurtured them as kids when they began to reach for the stars.

Of the many commodities that make up sport, loyalty is nowhere near top of the list. Neither is sentiment. Invariably the bottom line is always "how much more can I make?"

Warren says he feels "gutted and badly let down" while wishing him well, but one suspects he was almost resigned to Amirs’s exit after what had gone before with his marquee fighters. He is not the only promoter to have suffered in thus way - Frank Maloney famously lost Lennox Lewis after taking him to the world heavyweight title and he also helped construct the career of David Haye only to see him depart when the big league - and the big money - beckoned.

Warren says he had "a gentlemen’s agreement" with Khan’s people to continue being involved with his promotions, but the trouble with gentlemen’s agreements is that they are not worth the paper they are not written on. "I’ve learned my lesson," he says ruefully.
Not that anyone should feel desperately sorry for promoters. Like their fighters they are in it to make money, and most do very nicely, thank you. But in the Khan case I do have some sympathy with Warren, who invested a lot in the kid he signed as an 18-year-old Olympic silver medallist.



It was during the Athens Olympics, where Khan was Britain’s only boxer, that I first got to know him, having been deeply impressed with him as a schoolboy and junior. He was a nice lad then, and still is, which is why it is so disappointing that he has not been in touch with Warren since deciding to join Oscar de la Hoya’s Golden boy set-up in the United States. Even if it was just to say "thanks for all you’ve done Frank, but it’s time to move on."

It is perfectly understandable that he wants to further his career as profitably as he can but Warren will argue that it could have been done just as well with him as Golden Boy. After all, he has promoted in the US and has links there with a number of top promoters including Don King and Bob Arum.

The thing with Khan is that he has fallen in love - with America itself. Before he won the WBA light-welterweight title last summer he admitted to me that he had been seduced by the lifestyle in California, where he went to train in the Wild Card gym in downtown Hollywood with Freddie Roach – the wise move he made after sensationally being flattened in a few seconds by Colombian banger Breidis Prescott 15 months ago. This was a match that Warren had warned him against taking but by then Amir was already listening more to those around him more than his promoter.

"California Dreaming" was the headline above my interview with him in The Independent on Sunday and I guessed then that, with the final bout on his contract with Warren looming, we might see a parting of the ways sooner rather than later. Other promoters, both here and in then US, had been blowing in his ear - and more importantly those of his family and others involved in a career that Warren had skillfully exhumed after the Prescott debacle, making the fighter him several million richer in the process.

As the only journalist invited to Khan’s personal world title victory celebration party in Bolton I have come to know him well. He is one of the most genuinely likeable personalities I have encountered in  my half-century of sportswriting. Which I why, despite my disappointment at the way it has been handIed, I wish him good fortune in chasing his dream. Such is the paucity of talent in America, that, as De La Hoya says, with his dazzling hand-speed and charisma, he could become then new face of boxing over there.

Just as long as he remembers (in case he has already forgotten) that one more punch on the chin could bring a rude awakening. And in America, where they have all the time in the world for winners, there is no loyalty to losers.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist and boxing correspondent of The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered 11 summer Olympics and numerous world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.