FOR today’s blog I will be mainly wearing leopard print.
Well, I won’t because I am very fashion forward and I don’t want to look like a pub landlady circa 1989.
But leopard print has been prominent in my thoughts this week.
And that’s not just because I’ve been watching clips of Bet Lynch and Pat Butcher on YouTube.
No it is because of the recently released British film Giant.
Starring one-time James Bond Pierce Brosnan, the film tells the story of former world boxing champion ‘Prince’ Naseem Hamed.
The son of Yemeni immigrants, Hamed went from the back streets of Sheffield to the bright lights of New York and Nevada when he became world featherweight champion in the 1990s.
His razor sharp reflexes and switch-hitting in the ring were matched by fast talking and flashy clothes outside it.
He would dance his way into the ring wearing leopard print shorts surrounded by cornermen wearing jackets in the same material and once he had dispatched his opponent (31 of his 36 wins were inside the distance) he would perform back flips in celebration.
Inside the ring he dropped his hands, ducked, dived, taunted but had the punches to back up the braggadocio.
Seeing the posters promoting the film on the side of double decker buses and watching an interview with its stars Pierce Brosnan and Amir El-Masry on The One Show brought back memories for me and sent me scurrying into my garage.
There I pulled the tape off a cardboard box which can’t have been opened for 20 years and decanted my collection of Boxing News magazines from the late 1980s and early 1990s.
I say magazines, it was a black and white weekly newspaper which covered the world of professional and amateur boxing in the UK and around the world.
Helmed by eminent boxing journalist and historian Harry Mullan, Boxing News was the British equivalent of America’s glossy Ring magazine, which modestly described itself as “the Bible of boxing”.
Among those yellowing copies of Boxing News I found what I was looking for: several editions which contained interviews I did when I was a student and aspiring journalist.
It started with an interview I did when I was at Huddersfield Polytechnic and I trained at a boxing gym in Dewsbury.
There I met an interesting character called Horace Fleary who despite being a Yorkshireman was a boxing champion in Germany because his time based in the British army there had qualified him to fight for a title.
Harry Mullan liked the piece and when I suggested an interview with one of the world’s top boxing referees, Paul Thomas – a Welshman who happened to live down the the road from me in Derby – he commissioned me and I received a cheque for 60 quid, which was decent money for a student in those days.
Wondering who I could interview next, I pitched an idea about a young boxer from Sheffield who had only had three fights but was already making a name for himself with a style that made Muhammad Ali and Chris Eubank look self-effacing.
Harry agreed and off I went to meet 18-year-old Naseem Hamed at his mentor and trainer Brendan Ingle’s gym in the Wincobank area of Sheffield.
If you have never heard of Wincobank, then you’ll know where it is.
If you are driving down the M1 near Sheffield then just after you pass the big crane rental site look up to your right before you pass Meadowhall and you will see a steep hill lined with terraced houses and that’s Wincobank.
I parked my Beetle on the sloping road outside the gym and went in to meet the new British boxing prodigy and his eccentric Irish-born trainer Ingle whose quirky approach and clear coaching talent produced boxing champions including Johnny Nelson, Herol Graham and Kell Brook.
Dublin-born Ingle showed me around his gym, making sure no photographs were taken of the lines and circles painted on the wooden floor – which he used for carefully crafted footwork drills.
Brendan told me how he had first seen Naz as a seven-year-old. Ingle was sitting on the top deck of a bus and saw a fight going on in a school playground.
Hamed was dwarfed by much bigger boys but was still giving them a pasting.
Ingle persuaded his father to bring him along to his gym and that was the start of the story of one of Britain’s most talented boxing champions.
It is a scene that is recreated in the new film Giant in which Ingle is played by Pierce Brosnan.
It has received positive reviews with one critic calling it “the UK’s answer to Rocky” but another suggesting that it has more in common with classic British film Billy Elliott – the story of a working class boy overcoming all the odds to achieve his dream in a film filled with pathos and down-to-earth British humour.
I’ve yet to see the film but some of the clips brought back memories of that afternoon I spent in Sheffield with Hamed, before he had even added the monicker ‘Prince’ to his name.
But already, three fights into his career, he was wearing the leopard print shorts, taunting opponents and performing back flips after his victories.
After watching him train, he donned a hoodie and we sat in the living room of Ingle’s nearby home as I interviewed Naseem.
With one leg slung over the arm of a comfy chair, he talked about his style, how he had fans including MPs such as the later Sports Minister Richard Caborn and “most of Mansfield’s council”.
He told me he had recently received a visit from the Yemeni ambassador to the UK with an invitation from the president for Naz and Brendan to spend a month as his guests in Yemen.
And then this three-bout novice went on to explain that he had given Chris Eubank – the then world super-middleweight champion – advice on his ring style and celebrations.
Yes he was cocky but Hamed had the talent to back it up and my interview was published in Boxing News in November 1992 when he was unbeaten in five fights.
He went on to win multiple world titles at featherweight, only lost one bout out of 37, earned almost $50m from fight purses alone and in 1997 was ranked 22 on Forbes magazine’s list of the world’s highest paid athletes.
Pound-for-pound Naseem Hamed is one of the greatest boxers Britain has ever produced.
Towards the end of his career he fell out with Ingle over money, bringing to an end one of the most successful partnerships British boxing had ever seen.
In retirement he was involved in a car accident after crashing his McLaren-Mercedes sports car into a VW Golf in which the driver suffered fractures to every major bone in his body and bruising to his brain.
Hamed ran away from the scene unhurt.
He was sentenced to 15 months imprisonment for dangerous driving and after serving 16 weeks in jail he was later stripped of his MBE.
To say Hamed is now a few pounds over his fighting weight of nine stone is something of an understatement, but apparently his two sons are now training to become boxers.
Rowan Athale’s film Giant is a timely reminder of an imperfect character who was able to achieve perfection in a boxing ring.
And for Brendan Ingle, who died aged 77 in 2018, a man who devoted his life to providing a future for kids from inner city Sheffield, I’m sure he’d have loved to have been played in a film by the Irish James Bond.
:::
I’VE never received a guard of honour, you might be surprised to know, but I got pretty close to it yesterday.
I headed to the Drivers’ Club at Bowcliffe Hall for a catch-up lunch with Richard Jackson MBE who had come straight from one of his official duties as a Deputy Lieutenant (DL) of West Yorkshire.
I thought I might be a bit over-dressed in a Michelsberg blazer, flannels and knitted tie, but Richard trumped me in his official dark uniform with red piping, huge silver epaulettes and a row of medals on his chest.
I’m not sure how impressed he was when I asked him whether he had got his accordion as from a distance I thought he looked like a Salvation Army band member.
However it was my turn to be impressed when he told me he had come from officiating as the King’s official representative at three citizenship ceremonies at Leeds Civic Hall where 55 people had become British citizens.
We were joined at the lunch by Nigel Pullan, a former Coopers & Lybrand accountant who went on to run a diverse range of businesses in the motor retail and pet products sectors.
I told Nigel that the first time I met him – through our mutual friend Jonny Hick – he reminded me of a film star.
However I’m not sure how impressed he was that I said it was Joe Pesci in Goodfellas – stocky, unpredictable and with a talent for salty language.
What’s that line from the film Bambi?
“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say anything at all.”
I need to remember it a bit more often.
Have a great weekend.