THE annals of boxing are littered with tales of champion fighters falling on hard times once the ravages of age had withered their razor-sharp reflexes. Muhammad Ali, labelled The Greatest, was a pathetic shadow of the magnificent sportsman who was idolised around the world long before he was struck down by Parkinson's Disease.

Randolph Turpin once beat Sugar Ray Robinson, arguably the greatest boxer that ever lived, but he shot himself after failing to come to terms with the dying of his sporting light. Less tragic but equally pertinent is the case of the legendary Roberto Duran. He has been in the North-East in the last week, fulfilling a speaking engagement in an attempt to pay for his retirement.

And recently, former world heavyweight champions Riddick Bowe and Oliver McCall were sectioned in the United States.

Bowe turned to the Marines after hanging up his gloves, but he was jailed for kidnapping his wife and children. McCall, who famously burst into tears during a world title fight with Lennox Lewis, was put into care after hurling a fake Christmas tree through a hotel window.

Even Gary Mason, a British heavyweight of some note in the 1980s, ended up working as a hospital porter after squandering much of his earnings on an ill-fated attempt to make arm wrestling a popular TV sport.

Yet Frank Bruno seemed different. For so long the living personification of the British public's love of the underdog, he was apparently untouchable.

HAPPILY married with three children, and with a panto career that was often mocked but which kept him occupied, Bruno's easy demeanour and booming laugh should have granted him a content retirement. Instead, widespread rumours of his ill-health have sadly proved well founded. And seven years after his boxing career ended with a defeat to Mike Tyson, Bruno's gradual fall from grace has reached the most depressing of nadirs imaginable.

For boxers, putting so many years of dedication to the noble art to one side and starting afresh has proved simply impossible.

There are few sports as punishing as boxing, and not only on the brain cells. It requires ceaseless devotion to being in the perfect physical shape, and having been committed to that for so many years, fighters are often unable to make the adjustment to life on civvy street.

A handful of boxers have succeeded after putting their fighting days behind them - including the North-East's own Glenn McCrory, the former world cruiserweight champion who is now a TV commentator.

Bruno, on the other hand, made no provision for life after boxing. He is now paying a heavy price for that negligence.

Sir Henry Cooper, like Bruno a British boxing legend, says: "All fighters retire, and if you've planned your retirement you get over it. But I don't think Frank really thought it through. And if you don't have that daily routine any more, where you have to go to the gym at a certain time, train at a certain time, you miss it.

"One day you're a boxer and the next you wake up and you've retired. You're not a boxer, then you think, 'What am I going to do now?' It affects different people in different ways, so there's not something that he has or hasn't done. If you're going to get that type of mental illness, some people are more susceptible to it than others."

REMARKABLY, despite the litany of sorry tales, the sport's governing body is reluctant to help fighters once they leave the ring. Simon Block, general secretary of the British Boxing Board of Control, says: "The Board is there to regulate the sport of professional boxing and advice is given to all boxers when they turn professional about the need for financial thought.

"But I don't think in Frank's case that we're talking about financial worries. What a boxer does with himself after he's retired is really beyond the capability of the Board."

As well as his damaging divorce, Bruno seems to have been driven towards depression by boredom. He was involved in unseemly scenes following an Audley Harrison fight earlier this year, when he was again in the spotlight after revealing he wanted to make a boxing comeback. A torn retina would have dissuaded the BBBC from granting him a licence to fight again, even before this latest twist in an increasingly sad story.

Apart from some charity work, the plain, painful fact is 41-year-old Bruno has had nothing to do for so long. He has been rattling around his huge Essex mansion for two years since he split from his wife Laura.

Perhaps the most poignant vignette of this whole tale is that he has even taken to sleeping in a boxing ring. Now, at last, he is receiving treatment for his problems. All one can do is hope it has come in time. Former world featherweight champion Barry McGuigan says: "A lot of fighters need counselling when their careers are over. Frank fits into that category, knowing the sort of sensitive soul that he is. I know that he needed counselling, I know he has been having counselling, but it has almost happened too late for him."