Joe Molloy

This is an Irish Independent Podcast.

Last week, news which came out of the blue.

It fell into the surprising but not shocking category.

Now, this is, of course, a criminal story, but also a sporting one where boxing has been to the fore.

In due course, happy to say we'll speak to Nicola Talent of Crime World and sports journalist Ciarán Cunningham.

But first, it's worth standing back just a moment and laying out what has transpired because it has been so extraordinary.

Like I said, a criminal story, but also a sporting one.

Daniel Kinahan allegedly running a billion euro operation, secretive to the nth degree, and yet his passion for boxing tempted him out from the shadows.

Boxing must have held the very real lure of influence and glamour and respectability on a global scale.

And for a while, it all looked very possible.

These two pursuits, one requiring invisibility and the other bringing celebrity, running in parallel.

You'd have to say across the 2010s and into this decade, two things happened in tandem which really should have been mutually exclusive, but they weren't.

One, the Kinahan-Hutch feud caught fire.

It both horrified and enthralled the country as 18 men were murdered across several years.

And two, at the very same time, Daniel Kinahan rose and rose in the world of boxing.

At its peak, the gangland feud was borderline surreal.

It felt as if the lines between reality and fiction were blurred.

Gangland figures morphed ever more into big national characters.

They were the father of media coverage and WhatsApp groups across the country.

And, by coincidence or not, it was also a time when Love-Hate was the most popular show in the country.