For more than a decade I was a boxing writer, covering nearly all of Mike Tyson’s fights for the Daily Telegraph, along with the title fights of Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran, and  Lennox Lewis’s ascension to the world heavyweight title.

During that time I became good friends with photographer Micky Brennan, a former Photographer of the Year, whom I had known slightly in Fleet Street and with whom I later spent a lot of time at ringsides, in sweaty gyms, at training camps and in dressing rooms across America.

Micky continued to cover boxing long after I was moved to other beats, and he went on to become one of the world’s most eminent boxing photographers. Good friends with both Muhammad Ali and Mike Tyson, he amassed a wonderful portfolio of pictures, which included portraits of Muhammad Ali and every one of his opponents through the years.

Now his work is being recognised and memorialised in the form of a massive art installation at the L.A Live center in Los Angeles. The installation, created by artist Michael Kalish, consists of approximately 1,300 speed bags arranged to create a likeness of the athlete and based on a photograph of Ali taken by Micky at Deer Lake, Pennsylvania in the late 1970s.