After covering the fight game for the best part of half a century, I have come to appreciate a decent scrap, and there are some tasty ones on the menu, not least between David Haye and Wladimir Klitschko.

But the one catching my eye at the moment is an intriguing domestic spat between two old mates.

No, not the pending punch-up featuring Olympic gold medallist James DeGale, now British pro super middleweight champion and his former amateur buddy George Groves, who beat him once when they both wore vests and subsequently have become the best of enemies.

This set-to features another couple of pals who have fallen out, in this case over money – not theirs but the sum the British Olympic Association believe they are due from 2012 organisers LOCOG.

Hence the current contretemps between (both in the blue corner) M'lords Moynihan and Coe. The two Tory peers may be lightweights pugilistically but are respective title holders in the heavyweight division of sports politics.

How apposite then, that both possess something of a boxing background – Colin Berkley Moynihan, aka the Mighty Atom, won a Blue at Oxford as a bantamweight (he was actually quite useful with his mitts and remains proud of the fact that he was once banned by the Amateur Boxing Association because he was discovered sparring with professionals at London's Thomas A'Beckett gym – taboo in those unenlightened days).

Sebastian Newbold Coe, aka the LOCOG Larruper, also did a bit of boxing in his youth before concentrating on breaking world records on the track rather than opponents' noses, but he remains an avid fight fan, and has served as a steward on the British Boxing Board of Control.

However, his practical interest in unarmed combat since he retired from athletics has been throwing other people's weight around on the judo mat with close friend William Hague, one time Tory leader, now foreign secretary as his chief sparring partner.

So let's get ready to rumble!

The combative backgrounds of both parties make their current differences even more intriguing, especially as the BOA have refused to accept the decision of the referee – in this case International Olympic Committee President Jacques Rogge, who awarded LOCOG a controversial points verdict, and have taken the battle to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) in Switzerland for settlement.

Actually, never mind the boxing analogy - if nothing else it has given the 2012 a new event for the Olympic agenda: The tug of war.

This complicated and increasingly bitter wrangle concerns the divvying up of an anticipated £400 million ($650 million) surplus once the 2012 marketing revenue is counted.

LOCOG reckon this should subsidise the loss-making Paralympics while the BOA argue that as the Government are committed to underwriting them, 60 per cent should go into a legacy pot for grass roots and facilities.

Moreover the BOA are concerned that the future of some Olympic sports in this country could be jeopardised without some tangible financial legacy which the cash-back from any Games profit would help provide.

The issue is both vexed and complex, dating back to an agreement made with a previous BOA administration to give up rights to market the Olympics leading up to next year's event in return for £33 million ($54 million) compensation.

Moynihan, noting that Vancouver gave the Canadian Olympic Association £71 million ($115 million) for less valuable rights to the Winter Games, argues that the BOA settlement was seriously undervalued, and seeks a bigger cut.

While to the public it may seem a tiresome tiff between two fellow Olympic medallists, ominously it is the first major rift in what had seemed to be a smooth passage towards 2012.

Legal fisticuffs between Olympic Board members is certainly rather unseemly at this stage of the Games.

Moynihan declines to discuss the issue, saying it is now sub-judice, but he insists he remains on good terms with Coe and London mayor Boris Johnson (co-respondents in the case): "This is purely a commercial dispute and should not affect our relationship."


Nor, he says, do the BOA need the money to plug the reported £5 million ($8 million) black hole in their own finances, over which eyebrows have been raised as high as some of the salaries paid to senior staff, not least Sir Clive Woodward's reputed £300,000 ($488,000) a year as performance director.

However, there is rather more to this bizarre bout than meets the eye. At the heart of the matter is Moynihan's long-held desire to make the BOA the hub of British sport, as is the case with several other corresponding Olympic bodies, most notably in Italy and Germany.

He believes the BOA should be the principal architect for the preparation and delivery of competitors to 2012, and Olympics beyond that.

It is a position that has been nominally occupied by UK Sport, the Government agency, who distribute funding elite athletes and are now calling the shots when it comes to setting out medal targets, something with which the BOA feel they should be more involved.

Moynihan, a little man with lofty ambitions, may well have some justification in feeling that the BOA is not accorded the status it deserves with London's Olympics looming.

The days are gone when the BOA was simply a glorified travel agency, making sure that the uniforms fitted and that everyone marched in step at the opening ceremony.

First Craig Reedie and now Moynihan as successive chairmen, have hauled the BOA into the 21st century.

But that takes money, which is something the BOA, without an input from the Exchequer, have always had to find for themselves.

There are those who question not only Moynihan's motives, but his methods.

Ex-England rugby supremo Woodward is not the only expensive BOA recruit. Hiring high-fliers like new chief executive Andy Hunt and marketing director Hugh Chambers from the commercial fields, and bringing in the formerly US Olympic Committee communications head honcho as media chief has not come cheap.

But Moynihan is convinced it is necessary to get the best talent to make the BOA more professional in every sense and secure the organisation's place in the Premier League of British sports administration.

Another factor is Moynihan's relationship with the UK Sport chair, Sue Campbell, now elevated to sit with him and Coe in the House of Lords as a Baroness, albeit on the cross benches despite her known Labour sympathies.

The friction stems from Moynihan's election in 2005 as BOA chair, which he believed Campbell tried to block by surreptitiously canvassing unsuccessfully for another candidate, the Olympic swimmer Duncan Goodhew, to challenge him alongside vice-chair David Hemery. This she denies.

As I have said, all of this makes for the sort of fascinating bill-topper the likes of which those eminent purveyors of the sock market, Don King and Frank Warren, would feel at home promoting.

Ding, ding. Seconds out, last round.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Olympics, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.