The one-time trainer of former Australian boxing champ Vince Cervi has been jailed for more than eight years for killing him during a scuffle outside his Melbourne home.
David Allan Curran fired a fatal shot into Cervi's stomach as the pair wrestled over the gun following a dispute over furniture.
Victorian Supreme Court Justice Terry Forrest said Curran's crime was a serious example of manslaughter given he had not fired a shot to protect himself.
"You deliberately shot Mr Cervi in the stomach from close range and in the absence of any form of self-defence," he told Curran.
He said Curran was angry when he went to Mr Cervi's Preston home on March 9, 2009, and abused him on arrival.
"You went there expecting a physical confrontation of some sort," Justice Forrest told Curran on Tuesday.
He accepted the pair had been friends, but that their relationship was strained in the lead-up to Mr Cervi's death.
But Justice Forrest said he was unable to determine beyond reasonable doubt who brought the gun to the conflict.
Defence barrister Christopher Dane SC told Curran's plea hearing that his client accidentally killed Australia's 1995 heavyweight champion during a tragic confrontation between mates.
He said Curran had tried to revive Mr Cervi and police arrived at the scene to find him cradling his friend in a display of contrition.
Justice Forrest said he was prepared to accept these actions were genuine.
Curran, 49, was sentenced to eight years and six months in jail, with a minimum term of five years and six months.
He was originally found guilty of murder but won a retrial last year.
A second Victorian Supreme Court jury cleared him of murder but found him guilty of the lesser charge of manslaughter.
Curran has already served just over four years in custody following the shooting.
