They make 'em tough here in Fremantle, a rusty port town outside Perth that's seen the money come (mining) and go (the tough years) and come back again (the yuppies moved in). It contains the contradictions of modern Australia, good and bad. You can get a decaf latte in Freo, for sure, but don't be surprised if you get a punch in the head from an irritated local made bad along with your tiny biscotti lightly dusted with icing sugar. C'est la vie, non ... dickhead?   

It's become an unwitting but unlikely focus for the national media throng in the wake of the death here on Wednesday night of a 45-year-old man after a drunken brawl in the car park of the Coolbelup Hotel. It seems that the victim was one of three who were knocked unconscious in the Fremantle carpark, all of whom required hospital treatment. The deadly fight, which some suggest may have erupted over a mobile phone, was just one of a spate of fights at pubs and clubs across the country in the space of 24 hours. 

A delighted Mundine counts one genuine win after Wednesday's bout

And the most incidents were in – where else but Queensland, where police broke up a brawl involving 30 people in Ipswich, used batons to subdue rioters in a Townsville RSL and arrested up to 20 people in the Brisbane CBD. 

So if you do the sums, it adds up to this: thousands of mouthy, drunken insults from boys giving it the Big Talk. For each one of them, I figure at least two largish mates holding him back, one slightly shorter and drunker one egging him on and at least one beered-up slag screaming "eee's not worth it". Out of this pool of worthies, we might guess that a mere few hundred have the hip to match the lip. From them, come dozens for whom hard words are matched with hard deeds, and – in these cases – punches are thrown. And for one lucky punter in Fremantle: the ultimate prize, a fatal injury in a car park. In all, a total 60 men were arrested and charged with a variety of offences ranging from affray, aggravated assault and disorderly conduct through to attempted murder (and, of course, in the case of hapless fellow in Freo – actual murder). 

The common element? Mysteriously, ineffably, inexplicably all these fights took place on ... Wednesday night. 

That's right – the same Wednesday when national hero Anthony Mundine enthralled a nation by edging out serial nancy-boy Danny Green in a close-fought bout of fisticuffs. Hmmm. Once again, we ponder one of the more difficult questions of the modern era: Could there be some mysterious link between professional boxing and violent behaviour? 

Many so-called experts are quick to point the finger at boxing. After all, it's a soft target, failing to reinvent itself in an increasingly complicated world. Big boofy blokes having at each other, man-stylee, with the fists and the gloves and the hitting and all.  

As readers will no doubt be aware, there are four basic strikes in boxing – the jab, the cross, the hook and the upper-cut. But these are the precise taps of the true sportsman. What possible connection could there be between the clean precise strikes of the trained pugilist and the blind fist-throwing frenzy of the car-park Rockie?  

I think that we can all agree that it is simply impossible to imagine a more placid and gentle group of ambassadors for the sporting world than professional boxers. Anthony Mundine and Daniel Green have contributed more to human dignity and decency than any other human beings who have ever lived, with the possibly exceptions of the Buddha, Mahatma Gandhi, Bono and, perhaps, the Dalai Lama . To suggest that they could be in any way connected to the incidents on Wednesday night is suggestive of the kind of lazy guilt-by-association thinking that is at the root of most of the troubles that this country faces today. 

Since the 1950s, we've had to put up with a namby-pamby litany of whining from so-called experts about a whole bunch of things that supposedly cause us to get itchy fists: hard drugs, violence on TV, additives in fruit juices, nationalism, war, alcoholism, Britney Spears, soft drugs, not being cuddled as a baby, the Grand Theft Auto series of video games, poverty, gambling and, of course, films by any of the following directors: Martin Scorcese, Beat Takeshi, Quentin Tarantino and Woody Allen. (Or is Woody Allen who causes sleep, not violence? I'm never be sure). Any of this intoxicating cocktail of "causes" is likely – we are told – to send us off into a nether-world of flying fists and red mist. If you listen to the worriers, you could be forgiven for thinking it's a wonder any of us survive to adulthood at all.  

But boxing? I'm sorry, but I just don't see it. What's the connnection? Is it conceivable that the innocent pastime of watching one man beat another man half-to-death could really be linked in some way to incidents where one man beats another man to death? Whatever your position on the wide-ranging debate, you must agree it is a very difficult question, with no simple answer. Clearly, more research is needed before we could even venture a hypothesis one way or the other. This may take years.