FROM time to time the sport of boxing comes under attack from those who argue that it should be banned. Those who pursue that outcome have a very powerful logic on their side. Even those of us who disagree with their basic premise find it increasingly difficult to put their argument aside.

There is no excuse at all for a sport which requires one man to set about knocking another - man senseless, or at the very least damaging him physically to the extent that he cannot, "come up to scratch" after, being pummelled by his opponent in the fight".

In recent times there have been understandable and even, strident calls for a ban on professional boxing. This writer took part in a debate at the Trinity College Philosophical Society not long before Christmas on this particular theme. That debate was chaired by Barry McGuigan.

It was a rather shocking experience, given that I opposed the idea of a ban, to turn on my bedside radio early the following morning to learn that, within hours of the debate taking place, a young Scotsman had died after a fight in Glasgow.

This writer was also at the ringside in a London hotel dictating a report for this newspaper of a victory for Barry McGuigan when Alimi Mustafa (Young Ali) was wheeled past me on a trolley with a shocking death rattle in his throat. McGuigan had knocked him into a coma from which he never recovered. I have also been deeply disturbed by meeting Mohammad Ali face to face in a Las Vegas hotel corridor and seeing the blank and uncomprehending look on the face of the man who was once the most handsome and witty world boxing champion of all time.

Imagine then my shock and profound concern on hearing that, while all the reasons for banning boxing in its entirety were still alive and difficult to reject, two young women, one from Drogheda, were to meet in a boxing "match" on the Mike Tyson Frank Bruno bill in Las Vegas last weekend.

The word "match" is in inverted commas for a particular reason. The reason is that it was not a match. Even if one accept this regression to the Roman forum, or accept the vomitarium bowl being passed around, the "match" was nothing more than disgusting exploitation.

As someone who has been watching boxing in a professional journalistic capacity for some 20 years, I can only suggest that whoever allowed this so called contest to take place should be in prison, and possibly sharing a cell with the convicted rapist Mike Tyson and his manager, the convicted killer Don King.

Apart from the fact that two young women were sharing a ring which would later be used by a man who had offended the dignity of all women and, indeed, all human beings, there were several other reason that this fight should not have been allowed to take place.

It didn't help either to find that this so called sporting contest was treated just as that by reputable newspapers, including my own, as though it were to be acceptable in any sporting context.

What seemed to elude some of those who reported on this insult to human dignity was that the "contest" would have been forbidden under male boxing rules. Had the "contestants" been male they would not have been allowed to get into the ring to fight each other.

The reason is that one young woman - the Irish girl - was 15 pounds heavier than the other. Such a difference in weight between two fighters is totally barred in both amateur and professional boxing, with the exception of the heavy weight division.

In the continuing debate about the acceptability or otherwise of boxing, the question of having strict regulations concerning the weight divisions, has been to the fore.

In the many other contests in the Las Vegas bill no two other contestants were any more than, even pounds apart. Yet these two girls were 15 pounds apart, one of them, the Irish girl, had agreed to fight within 10 days of being asked to take.

But even these considerations are academic. The stark truth is, that it is difficult, even impossible, to defend boxing as a totally acceptable pursuit in a civilised society. The only argument in its favour is that a ban would, without doubt, be impossible in the first place and would probably bring about seven more abuse than exists at the moment.

To extend the present abuses to the extent that girls and women should be allowed to take part in boxing is to accept that all the high falutin nonsense about the banning of boxing per se is nothing but hyprocrisy.

What happened in Las Vegas, with the introduction of a bout between two women, is simply not acceptable. It does nothing at all for the image of boxing as it exists and even less for the ideal which most of us share that the female of the species has reached a higher level of decency than the rest of us.

Perhaps it may not be politically correct to express these views. So be it. But let those who climb onto pompous high moral ground about the dangers and the unacceptability of boxing in the future be aware that their apparent acceptance of the degradation to which it dropped in Las Vegas last weekend has blown their cover.