Brendan Ingle spent many years up close with a great British fighter he believed had what it took to be better than heavyweight icon, Muhammad Ali.
Ingle is considered one of the best trainers to grace the sport, spending his career in Sheffield coaching fighters out of the St Thomas’ Gym in Wincobank. He played a key role in the campaigns of the likes of Herol ‘Bomber’ Graham, Johnny Nelson, Junior Witter and Kell Brook.
Speaking to the BBC many years ago, however, he admitted that one man was better than them all and could have achieved even more had he not been distracted by the spoils of his success.
“Naseem Hamed should have gone on and on, and I said to people that he could have been as good if not better than Muhammed Ali… you look at what he can do. But Naseem, he never reached his potential, what he could have done would have been just amazing. He used to spar with Neville Brown who used to be middleweight champion… there was a difference of two and a half stones… he [Neville] couldn’t hit him!
“The pinnacle of his career was when he beat Robinson for the title…. from then on he became a nightmare, and it’s not criticising him, it’s a fact what happened. “It became a nightmare training him… but I’m the trainer and at the end of the day the buck stops at me, no matter what the problems are people would always come to me and ask what was wrong. But money does strange things to people – if I was 21 and had two or three million pounds I don’t know what would happen.”
‘Prince Nas’ fought from 1992 to 2002. He ruled the featherweight division, holding the WBO title from 1995 and later capturing the WBC and IBF belts, though was well known for his brash persona and show-stopping ring entrances as well as his southpaw stance and devastating knockout power, which led to 31 KOs in 36 wins. He only lost once, to Marco Antonio Barrera in 2001, and retired after defeating Manuel Calvo in 2002, finishing with a 36-1 record.
He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2015 and has been cited as an inspiration by Oleksandr Usyk amongst many others.
Hamed and Ingle had a famous figher/trainer relationship, though split around 1998. Though there was some back and forth at the time, after Ingle’s passing in 2018, Hamed paid tribute to him.
