a interesting Naz article from Boxing Monthly April 1999

Bridges burned, built and rebuilt, the Prince Naseem Hamed roadshow returns to Britain on 10 April, when the World Boxing Organisation featherweight champion defends his title for the 13th time against Scarborough's Paul Ingle, who will need all the luck he can find in the MEN arena, Manchester.

Hamed's last appearance, the 12-round decision over Wayne McCullough last October, turned out to be one of the most controversial boxing events in recent times. Hamed went to war with everyone in Atlantic City, it seemed, aside from McCullough. The atmosphere surrounding the fight stank and the Prince's eventual performance was badly received by a media with whom the Prince fought bitterly, gloves off.

While those "in the know" were aware of the stresses surrounding that promotion, nobody could have predicted quite what would follow.

Hamed and his family, who were growing increasingly influential in his career, were flexing their muscles. And the end result was a cutting of ties with Frank Warren, the promoter who had taken Hamed to the title, and Brendan Ingle, the trainer/manager who had guided the Yorkshireman of Yemeni descent from an early age. The Hameds - Naz and brothers Riath and Nabeel - were ready to go it alone.

One of their first moves on returning to Britain was to get the media back on-side. Hamed had infamously berated one senior writer publicly in Atlantic City and also reduced a TV broadcaster to tears. Sensibly and no doubt at the suggestion of the fighter's many sponsors, including the sportswear giant adidas, the Hamed clan invited the offended parties, plus a few more - the Prince didn't have many kind words for anyone while in the States - to a private lunch in London, with the understanding that the media were not to report goings on. All went well, apologies and explanations were made and accepted.

Stage two was the split with Warren, with whom undefeated Hamed had won each of his professional titles - European bantam, WBC International super bantam, WBO and, for two fights, IBF feather. This was not too difficult an operation on a strategic level as Warren's contract with the Prince was up for renewal at that time. And renewed it was not. Then there was the matter of Brendan Ingle, no relation to this month's challenger. If all had seemed rosy in the relationship with Warren prior to the split, it was common knowledge that the Hamed clan and the Sheffield guru did not see eye to eye. Ingle's cut from Naz's purses had decreased proportionately as the amounts had increased in size. But the release of the book "The Paddy and the Prince", in which Ingle was openly critical of the Hameds, was the final straw for the fighter and his family.

For the McCullough fight, Ingle was demoted to the role of "corner adviser", and his sons John and Dominic were given greater responsibility. And the way in which the veteran trainer was treated during that contest - Ingle's "advice" definitely was not required and he was made well aware of the fact - hammered the final nail in that particular coffin. Ingle waved them bye bye, with only one or two of his fingers extended.

The final job for the Hameds was to renegotiate their deal with the American TV giant Home Box Office, who also had received a variety of snubs, even if only in the form of non-co-operation, in New Jersey. Had Naz pasted McCullough out of sight, they might have forgiven him. But a 12-round bore against a "faded" former bantam champ was not what they expected from their six-fight, $12 million investment.

However, the deck was loaded in the Hameds' favour - not even Oscar De La Hoya had given the TV men better viewing figures and with boxing desperately light on star quality, HBO listened with favourable ears. The result was a contract which gave them virtual worldwide control of the Prince. Everyone the Hameds needed to be happy was happy.

All in all, the coup masterminded by Naz's oldest brother, Riath, was fantastically successful. Any blood shed certainly contained no Yemeni corpuscles. Riath wanted greater control for his brother and he got it. Installed as Naz's new trainer is a New Jersey-based Puerto Rican, Oscar Suarez. And don't be embarrassed to ask "Oscar who?" Suarez is something of a mystery. The link, it seems, was forged by the trainer's relationship with the distinctly average American-based Arab, Omar Sheika. But when Steve Lott, a student of the sport who works with Sheika's former manager, Bill Cayton, was asked about Suarez by our own Steve Farhood, Lott replied along the lines that Suarez "might have been Sheika's cut man". Might have been? Thoughts of the old adage regarding multi-million dollar fighter planes and 10 cent control towers come to mind.

But the Hameds are happy with Senor Suarez, who has been working with the WBO champ at Glyn Rhodes's gym in Sheffield. Naz has claimed that he's learned more in his time with Suarez than he ever had previously. And while that blatant exaggeration may have been little more than a thinly disguised attack on Brendan Ingle, the chances are that, after the best part of 20 years, Hamed needed a change in his training regime in order to breath fresh life into his career. Most definitely, Naz had looked stale in recent fights. Maybe now he can go on to achieve everything that he so often has promised. But, it must be said, the breaking up of successful fighter-trainer relationships do not generally result in better performances, over a prolonged stretch of time, in the ring. Time will tell.

While firmly in control of their own destinies, the Hameds realised they would still need a promoter to "get his hands dirty" come fight night - the nuts and bolts of putting on a major show are hard to put in place, even for the most inventive business minds. And so it was back to square one and Barry Hearn, the Matchroom boss who promoted the very first professional outings of the Prince.

But cannily, the Hameds have employed Hearn for a fee far smaller than the general promoter's cut. And while he complains, in an accompanying article to this piece, that he has never been off the scene, a union with the Hameds, no matter how short-lived it might transpire to be, offers Hearn the chance to return to the big stage that once was his when Chris Eubank was at the peak of his drawing powers. A good deal is one that sees everyone win, and the Hamed-Hearn agreement comfortably meets those requirements.

Which brings us to Ingle, Paul, challenger voluntary and outside the WBO top 10 (although that may well change by fight time). Ingle's career, attitude and preparations are catalogued on pages 28-29. And while it seems unfair to dismiss his chances of victory out of hand, those chances do not seem great. He will do well to last four rounds. And if that seems like a rather brief, perfunctory preview, then you don't realise quite how hard Hamed hits. And Ingle soon will. Styles make fights but big bombs stop them and it appears to me that the challenger could find himself out of his depth in this fight. For spectacle's sake, let's hope that's not the case.

The truth of this situation is that the Hameds are experimenting in a low-risk manner. Manchester has always come out for the Prince; Hearn might be out of practice, but he's promoted so many major events that one thinks of him as a man who has fallen off his bike but who will prove himself still to be a damned good rider once he gets back on; only Suarez appears to be a risk, but then Naz, providing he's in good shape, will not be required to engage in a tactical battle on this occasion. Naseem Hamed, 32-0, 29 KOs - print it now.

All in all, the new regime have set things up rather nicely on this occasion. Things might be tougher for them in the future, but they have shown sense and humility that their critics thought beyond them by electing to walk before they can run. They realise that resentful eyes will be watching to see them blow it, but whatever the future holds, they will not fall at the first hurdle. And the first step is often the hardest.