This is the only debatable part of it Dave.

In terms of the money paid for tickets, that goes to the professional competitors at the top of the bill.

In terms of the experience of the kids, they compete under the same safety conditions, and according to the same rules as they would in any other context, but they compete as part of a warm up for a professional tournament.

I grew up in Hing Kong, where we hosted the annual Hong Kong sevens.

This featured the All Blacks, Australians, Fijians etc, playing full contact rugby, sometimes with some horrible injuries and fighting involved.

It also featured kids warm up matches for different age groups - the ultimate experience for a young kid of 6, 8 or 12 - playing in front of "baying" crowd of 30,000 or so fans, most of whom were (as tradition dictated) downing jugs galore of San Miguel or Carlsberg, and most of whom had paid exorbitant amounts of money for their tickets.

Its important to get the jean claude vab damme movie image of unrestrained carnage out of our heads before we pass judgement on these events.

Its important to judge these events according to what they actually were and what actually happened and not to be suckered by the 'outrage' of our ever so reliable media.

The only legally and ethically questionable aspect of these events would be the matter of whether the kids were allowed to stay and watch the professional fights afterwards, though judging by the police response, no laws of any kind were broken, so we have no reason to believe they did.

All we know id that two kids competed in a legitimate and carefully regulated sport before an audience.