How many people, outside of those who make their pounds and their bucks out of his career, would have been truly distressed had Wayne McCullough announced his retirement last Saturday night amid the detritus of his gallant but ultimately fruitless world title bid?

How many would have gladly forsaken all the talk about a rematch with a boxer McCullough has no realistic chance of beating if they thought he could get out of this increasingly sordid game while he was still ahead?

Retirement would have been incontrovertible proof that a man with virtues and characteristics much too honourable for a boxing world populated by vainglorious empty-heads like Naseem Hamed could emerge with his dignity and his faculties intact. As it is, McCullough and his "people" will spend the next six months looking for another big purse in the knowledge that his chances of ever becoming world champion again and recovering the lustre he has lost are receding with every passing day. It is not, and will not be, the way in which McCullough should be remembered.

This was a man who had the courage of his convictions and a steadfast belief in doing the right thing, when most of his contemporaries were either nowhere to be found or were hiding behind mealy-mouthed platitudes. In 1988, the 17-year-old from the Highfield Estate at the top of Belfast's Loyalist Shankill Road represented the Republic at the Seoul Olympics and carried the Tricolour at the opening ceremony. McCullough could see only the honour of the situation and placed that ahead any of the political balancing acts that would normally be required of someone with his dual status.

The whole experience and the subsequent, inevitable fall-out was clearly a formative one for the young boxer. With all the tunnel vision of someone destined for much better things, he could see only boxing and could not fathom why political capital would be made out of his leading the Irish team at the Games. Albert Foundry, the club he joined as a raw youngster, Ulster, Ireland - it did not matter. Just pull on the vest, lace up the gloves and get on with it. Just box.

His learning process hit another steep curve during the tumultuous celebrations that followed his silver medal at the Barcelona Olympics in 1992. During those Games McCullough forged a strong friendship with Ireland's other medal winner, Dubliner Michael Carruth. To Wayne they were boxers cut from the same cloth. From similar working class backgrounds. All part of the same sport. Just boxing. In the event McCullough's silver star was eclipsed by Carruth's gold - but it mattered not. Both men were feted at an unforgettable late night party at Dublin Airport and Ireland, north and south, afforded them the recognition they deserved. There were similar scenes the next day at the Mansion House and all of a sudden the boxer from Highfield was the boy in the big picture. Impressed by what he had seen in Dublin, McCullough fully expected more of the same when the Olympic cavalcade rolled into Belfast.

It may only be six years ago, but Belfast was a very different city then and it had other ideas. The powers that were had decided on a civic reception to welcome home McCullough. But the Dubliner, Carruth, was not to be invited. McCullough was a "British" medallist, Carruth an Irish one and local councillors thought they knew the difference. "We can only go with things that are British," the Lord Mayor said at the time. Reading those words now, they seem like an echo of some half-imagined Lilliputian era. But they were very real at the time and the Carruth snub was a cold, calculated act. McCullough reacted with anger and disgust but it was a reaction tempered with the arch-dignity that has become his calling card. "You do nothing for this country, nothing," he is reported as saying to the unfortunate dignitary.

Little wonder then that McCullough and Cheryl, the woman who is now his wife, leaped out of the goldfish bowl just as quickly as they could and re-invented themselves across the Atlantic.

The Americanisation of the McCulloughs is a source of amusement and even derision here, but it is seldom seen in its true light - the couple's desire to make themselves as different as was humanly possible to the holders of the closed minds they had left behind.

Wayne revelled in his American circumstance. Here was a land where people were interested only in how you boxed not in where you were from, whose vest you wore or whose flag you carried. His epic journey to Nagoya three years ago to take the WBC bantamweight title from the Japanese champion Yasheui Yakashuji remains the highpoint of his years in America while the low-point was undoubtedly the very public fallout with Mat Tinley, his manager and mentor.

Even here, though, it was McCullough who emerged with all the credit. When he said that money was not the guiding force in his life and that he only wanted to be adequately rewarded for his talents, his words were imbued with so much innocent sincerity that you could only believe him. This sincerity should be his legacy and dignified retirement would have preserved that forever.

If McCullough needs any more evidence about just how quickly this satellite-driven fame can fade, it was there in the person of the former featherweight world champion, Juan Laporte, who was ringside at the Boardwalk Convention Centre on Saturday night. Laporte now earns his crust with the New York City Housing Authority but his opinion of the current WBO champion at the division in which he himself excelled rang out like a voice from a different era. "This guy is a clown. He's a comedian. I wish he had been around when I was there." And if McCullough continues to ply his trade alongside the Hameds of this strange, surreal boxing world that television has created, he will only be tainted by association. Of more pressing concern are the physical consequences of McCullough's fabled durability. And as he becomes more ringworn that will get worse, not better. Self-preservation is no sign of weakness and McCullough has time and again proved himself a man with enough self-knowledge to realise things like that.

The air is heavy just now with empty talk of a rematch. But McCullough should take one step back and consider one of the Hamed's most laughable post-fight pronouncements. "He (McCullough) has got plenty of respect," Hamed said, "and I've got respect". Just when you thought language could not be devalued any further, Hamed strides in and confounds all your expectations. By throwing the Prince's pre-fight braggadocio back in his smug face, Wayne McCullough has made his point. Better to get out now with all that respect and all that dignity intact.