Boxer Joe Calzaghe today won the first round of his legal fight with his former manager Frank Warren.

A High Court judge ordered Warren's company, Sports Network, to pay £1.76 million into court ahead of the main hearing to decide which one of the pair owes money to the other.

Frank Warren is claiming the boxer owes him more than £1 million for breaking a verbal contract to promote any further fights after Calzaghe ended his 12-year association with Sports Network in June.

Calzaghe denied there was any such contract and counterclaimed that Sports Network owed him more than £2 million in unpaid fees for his defeat of Bernard Hopkins in Las Vegas in April.

Mr Justice Coulson also ordered that Sports Network produce accounts to show the profits and expenses of the Hopkins fight within eight days.

The judge said Calzaghe was the current BBC Sports Personality of the Year who had enjoyed a "successful and profitable’’ relationship with Warren until the two "fell out’’.

Calzaghe said he is entitled to 80% of the profits received by Sports Network from the Hopkins fight but had received just £1 million and all his efforts to find out how much Sports Network had received had been in vain.

Mr Justice Coulson said some information given by Warren or his advisers about the profits from the Hopkins fight had been "inaccurate’’.

"This has helped to create the impression that the claimant (Sports Network) has not been entirely straightforward with the court.’’