Ex-Boxing Champ Killed With Single Punch

Updated:17:45, Tuesday March 11, 2003

A former boxing champion has been jailed for four-and-a-half years for killing a man with a single punch.

Murad Hussain, who held the Commonwealth light welterweight title in the mid-1980s, poleaxed Sokal Tahiri with a left hook while working as a nightclub bouncer.

Trouble flared after Mr Tahiri and his group were refused entry to the club in Leytonstone, east London.

Hussain's punch knocked Mr Tahiri, 21, to the ground and he struck his head hard on the pavement, causing brain damage.

An Old Bailey jury cleared Hussain, 41, of Dagenham, east London, of murder but convicted him of the alternative, lesser charge of manslaughter.

Judge Gerald Gordon told him there were no winners in a case such as this.

"The jury found you were not acting in reasonable self-defence as you claimed," he said.

"I cannot ignore the fact that you were a successful professional boxer.

"It should have been clear to you that the use of a fist by you carried with it a much greater risk than other people."

Hussain, a father of four, was working as a child care worker and earned extra cash as a doorman.

After appearing at the Commonwealth Games, he turned professional. At one time, he was ranked fifth in the country at light welterweight.

He had also repeatedly punched a friend of the victim and was convicted of unlawful wounding.

Mr Tahiri, an Albanian asylum seeker, had been in Britain for four years.

The incident occurred on July 22 last year and he died in hospital on August 2.