The flag of Pakistan waved proudly from the stands as Amir Khan defended his WBA light-welterweight title against Dimitriy Salita.
On his moment of victory, it was hoisted proudly alongside - sewn together with, in fact - the Union Jack and the flag of St George.
In the defeated Salita's corner, both the Stars and Stripes and the Star of David hung limp.
If comments he made this week are to be taken seriously, Khan is a young man who sits a little uneasily with his heritage. On Saturday night, the message was clear: go global.
No-one expected the competent but untested Salita to provide any kind of defining fight for the Bolton 22-year-old. But the manner of Khan's victory was sensational.
His profile - hardly tarnished by one unfortunate, unguarded remark - will sky-rocket as a result and surely ratchet up the interest of the American pay-per-view moguls.
A Khan fight these days is a big-time buzz - a buzz captured once by the ringside Naseem Hamed, and on Ricky Hatton's Las Vegas dates.
It is a buzz which transcends the sport and filters through to high streets and big-screen bars.
It's a buzz which will comfortably drown out a handful of remaining bigots just as long as Khan continues to produce his dazzlingly quick and classy performances inside the ring.
Khan's performance was perfect. Salita hardly brought with him the record of a big-punching threat but he nevertheless boasted a record of 31 fights and no defeats.
Khan smashed him to the canvas three times in the opening minute before the contest was waved off. It was a message to reverberate across the Atlantic.
Next for Khan, perhaps, Las Vegas. Ironically that is a place which his Filipino gym-mate Manny Pacquiao has made his own in the last 12 months with stunning wins over Oscar De Hoya and Miguel Cotto.
Not for Las Vegans the kind of small-minded attitude Khan was intimating exists in Britain. The Strip's reknowned fight fans will acclaim a fighter of any creed or colour for their own just so long as he can fight.
Khan can fight. His chin may be dodgy, his defence leaky albeit much improved, his over-eagerness a little concerning, but all those add up to make him one of the most exciting and accessible stars in the sport today.
He brings with him that profile - not a profile rooted in any particular race, rather one which presents a carefully brash and cocksure young kid with the big ambition of emulating and perhaps even beating Pacquiao.
Khan's world is one in which he really need not concern himself with perceived injustices, simply because, as well as seemingly being wide of the mark, they relate to an ever more marginalised band of critics.
He needs to keep doing more jobs like the one he did on Salita on Saturday night, in a respectful fight which, incidentally, had successfully pretty much avoided the issue of a Muslim fighting a Jew.
Such parochial concerns are best kept to grubby pamphlets and pit-bull backyards. Khan has the capability to rise above it, and one day become a fighter whose ability will be recognised and cheered by all.
Source: espnstar.com
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