Looking forward to the big David and Goliath fight tomorrow night: the Hayemaker, Britain's David Haye, up against the Beast from the East, Russian Nikolai Valuev. I'm intrigued that despite the giant Russian's forbidding physique and granite-hewn features, at heart he's the epitome of the gentle giant – a quiet family man who's a fan of Russian literature, and is classical music's only known aficionado in the boxing world. Valuev's music of choice is Chopin and Mozart, which makes me wonder which piece he'll choose to enter the ring to in Nuremberg on Saturday. Instead of the usual testosterone-churning power ballad, maybe he'll pick Chopin's Revolutionary Etude. Or perhaps the funeral march from the Second Sonata, a premonition of the fate he hopes to inflict on Britain's (relatively) diminutive challenger for his world-heavyweight crown. Best of all, maybe Valuev will ironise the whole situation and choose something like the A minor Mazurka, Op 17, no 4, among the most enigmatic and emotionally ambiguous of all Chopin's works, which would briefly give the Nuremberg crowd a moment of existential angst before the main business of the boxing and the blood-letting. My money's on Valuev to retain his title, anyway, and a victory for this highly cultured Goliath would strike a blow for classical music in the unlikeliest of arenas.
