Prince Naseem Hamed has named one of the primary factors that contributed to his defeat against Marco Antonio Barrera.<\/p>\n
The pair squared off back in 2001, years after Hamed had split with Brendan Ingle, his longtime trainer, and joined forces with Emanuel Steward.<\/p>\n
With Ingle in his corner, \u2018Naz\u2019 had captured the WBO world featherweight title by dethroning Steve Robinson with a scintillating eighth-round stoppage victory in 1995.<\/p>\n
After that, the charismatic showman would make 11 defences of his belt, including an iconic fourth-round finish over Kevin Kelley<\/a>, before ending his fruitful relationship with Ingle.<\/p>\n Then, while operating under the tutelage of legendary trainer Steward, Hamed had made a further four title defences ahead of his clash with Barrera.<\/p>\n Because of his resounding success at 126lbs, the Sheffield man was made a sizeable favourite against Barrera who, back then, had not yet completed his rivalries with the likes of Manny Pacquiao and Erik Morales.<\/p>\n But despite his underdog status, the Mexican ultimately gave Hamed by far his toughest night\u2019s work, eventually claiming a deserved unanimous decision victory.<\/p>\n Since then, though, \u2018Naz\u2019, who had earlier vacated his WBO title, has insisted that his preparation was far from ideal for such a significant showdown in Las Vegas.<\/p>\n Speaking with Froch On Fighting<\/a> as part of the promotional run for the biopic <\/a>Giant<\/a>, the British boxing legend revealed that his battle with the scales represented the most gruelling challenge prior to fight night.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was impossible to prepare [for Barrera], because eight weeks to lose 2.5 stone [35lbs] was virtually impossible.<\/p>\n \u201cThe first day [of camp], Oscar Suarez, who was my trainer [alongside Steward] then, said: \u2018Right, let\u2019s weigh you\u2019. I was 11 stone [154lbs], and he said to me, \u2018Right, we\u2019ve got this nutritionist and you\u2019re going to live on 500 calories a day.<\/p>\n \u201cFrom the start of training camp to the last day of training camp \u2013 going to Vegas \u2013 I still didn\u2019t make the weight.<\/p>\n \u201cI was so weight-drained, and it was dangerous, but I just always thought in my heart that there was no way [Barrera] was going to knock me out, or stop me.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd I always thought: \u2018He can\u2019t go 12 rounds without me catching him\u2019.\u201d<\/p>\n Following his sole defeat to Barrara, Hamed would have one more outing, a points victory over Manuel Calvo, before hanging up his gloves in 2002 as a British boxing legend.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Prince Naseem Hamed has named one of the primary factors that contributed to his defeat against Marco Antonio…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":400856,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-400855","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-boxing","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400855","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=400855"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/400855\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/400856"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=400855"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=400855"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=400855"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}