Kevin Mitchell Boxing
Brendan Ingle says Naseem Hamed has been abandoned by his friends and will be finished as a top-flight fighter within two years. Given the turbulent nature of the business, it is not surprising that boxing generates such bitterness between old associates when they discover that their long-held trust is the sham they feared it might have been all along. Even so, Ingle’s hard words in an interview last week dripped with sadness.
Ingle pulled few punches; just as he had taught Hamed. Mentor and protg split after Christmas and now Ingle thinks that the featherweight he once described as “potentially the greatest boxer of them all” will lose for the first time. It is unlikely to happen on Saturday night when Hamed takes on the trainer’s unrelated namesake, Paul Ingle, in Manchester, but he believes defeat is not far off.
It wasn’t meant to end like this. Brendan Ingle and Hamed had a special relationship; different, most of us thought, from the regulation roguery of the fight game. While Ingle’s blarney continued to be an entertaining smokescreen to Hamed’s effortless descent into gifted superbrat as his fame outgrew their native Sheffield, few but their closest confidants reckoned the growing discontent between them was the final chapter in their story.
Ingle had taken Hamed in at St Thomas’s Boys’ Club in Wincobank, on the rougher edge of Sheffield, when Hamed was seven. The Prince, as he would become in his own imagination, told Ingle he was destined to be world champion and, at the age of 21, he stood in the middle of a ring in Cardiff with the belt around his waist and the Irishman at his side. From then on, however, the disintegration of their mutual loyalty was inexorable.
Hamed last year called Ingle “Judas” for speaking with candour about their finances to journalist Nick Pitt whose book, The Paddy and the Prince, exposed the fragile nature of the alliance between Ingle, Hamed and the fighter’s older brother, Riath. Ingle, whose MBE last week came shortly after Hamed’s, reckons they have finished all square. There’s no going back.
“All Hamed is doing now is picking out bodies to fight,” said Ingle. “I’ll be surprised if he fights twice a year. He will be finished within two years. He has had dreadful trouble with his hands. In my opinion, he hasn’t got a friend in the world.” While the career judgment might constitute wishful thinking on Ingle’s part, it must be said that Hamed and his tight-knit circle appear to have drifted apart.
Certainly Ingle will not be there when “The Naz Fella” – as he called Hamed in the nearly 18 years they were together – defends his world title. Nor, says Ingle, will any of the other fighters from the gym in Wincobank that Hamed has left behind.
In the unlikely, but not impossible, event the contest takes a turn for the worse, Hamed will see not the familiar faces of these comrades to offer encouragement, but a grateful employee called Oscar Suarez. Ingle derides his replacement, imported from New York, as a touring professional even seasoned gym rats know little about. “He will be getting paid buttons,” says Ingle. “He’s just a yes man.”
Riath Hamed does not see the scenario thus. He says Ingle blundered when he allied himself with Frank Warren, the promoter who made Hamed 15-million, but who has been marginalised in the plot since he fell out with Don King.
Riath Hamed’s installation as his brother’s manager after last year’s public relations disaster in Atlantic City, when Naseem Hamed nearly withdrew from his fight with Wayne McCullough, confirmed the total rift.
Says Riath Hamed: “Brendan gave Naz an ultimatum: go back to Frank, or you lose me. There were all these problems with Warren, and Brendan tried to put us in a corner. We could deal with it, and the bitterness was building up in Brendan more than in anybody else. There may be a window with Frank, but with Brendan it’s dead and buried.” That suits Ingle.
Says Ingle: “When he turned professional, I told everybody Hamed would win world titles at seven weights from bantam to super- middleweight. People thought I was mad, but I meant it. Now? Erik Morales will move up from super-bantamweight and beat him and Hamed will move up to super-featherweight and Floyd Mayweather will beat him. I’m convinced of that.
“Remember, he’s 25, not the same fighter he was at 23, and he always blows up between fights to 73kg. Three, four years ago, he was brilliant. He could box orthodox, southpaw, switch, hitting from each side, all the angles. Not now. Hamed should win [this fight against Paul Ingle]. But, even so, the one thing that kid [Paul Ingle] has got is plenty of bottle.”
But it is more logical to agree with Riath Hamed that Naseem Hamed is far from over. He has built on the foundations of a boxing empire that involves all the family by striking a $12-million deal with the American cable company, Home Box Office, and says the fighter will unify the title within a year. Boxing politics suggests this is unlikely, but there is plenty of power left in the Prince – if he remains free of injury.
“He’s had trouble with his hands, that’s true,” says Riath Hamed. “But right now they’re kind of stable. I hope there are not going to be any major problems with them in the future.”
“Still, he adds, “the Home Box Office deal is a good one. This is the first of six fights. Hopefully, we will fight here again next year, although the contract doesn’t stipulate that he must fight in the United States. (It would be naive, however, to imagine the Americans would not want Hamed fighting over there in prime time – we might well be witnessing the farewell of the Prince.) Naz wants to unify the title, and we’re going to resolve how after this fight. He’s still got plenty of time to move up in weight.”
The World Boxing Organisation, which is paid handsomely for sanctioning Naseem Hamed’s championship, met in Puerto Rico recently to discuss the situation of Mexican Juan Manuel Marquez, who has been its mandatory challenger for 16 months. Riath Hamed would not be drawn on the details, but says there is “no problem” in fulfiling that obligation.
There have, however, been other problems. Ingle alleges that the Hameds tried to persuade champion Carl Thompson and Johnny Nelson to pull out of their cruiserweight title fight last week, a serious charge that elaborates on the claim he made in a post-fight interview. Riath Hamed and his brother have taken legal advice.
“Naz got in Thompson’s ear,” says Ingle. “He said, `I box for 1-million, you shouldn’t box for less.’ Carl said he felt like giving up the title. Naz then got to Johnny Nelson and said, `Don’t sign, don’t sign.’ He said, `I can get you a deal with HBO.’ Frank had to send him a solicitor’s letter.
“Johnny had been waiting eight, years for this, but Naz was telling him, `I can get you bigger fights, more money.’ Frank then started having arguments with Billy Graham [Thompson’s trainer]. In Oldham, at the Silky Jones fight, Graham was wearing a Naz T-shirt. Andy Ayling, Frank’s assistant, told him, `Ricky Hatton [the Young Fighter of the Year rumoured to be considering leaving Warren for the Hamed stable] doesn’t box unless you cover up that T- shirt.'”
Hatton boxed – but Graham incurred Warren’s wrath again last Saturday night when he wore a Naz T-shirt as Nelson beat up Thompson in five rounds. Warren has docked Thompson’s purse.
The row, inevitably, rumbles on. “If you gave him 1-million,” Ingle says of Hamed, “it would not be enough. But, after all the talk, nobody’s left the gym here. Nobody.”
Except The Naz Fella. Rightly or wrongly, he has cast Ingle adrift. Like every boxer, he knows his destiny is in his own bruised hands and that, on Saturday night, only Paul Ingle will share that loneliness with him.
ENDS