{"id":401949,"date":"2026-01-11T05:34:04","date_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:34:04","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/401949\/"},"modified":"2026-01-11T05:34:04","modified_gmt":"2026-01-11T05:34:04","slug":"remembering-the-career-of-arab-boxing-legend-prince-naseem-hamed-as-biopic-giant-hits-cinemas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/401949\/","title":{"rendered":"Remembering the career of Arab boxing legend ‘Prince’ Naseem Hamed as biopic Giant hits cinemas"},"content":{"rendered":"

There was a time before the likes of Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao when the boxing world revolved around a British-Yemeni featherweight. <\/p>\n

But Naseem Hamed was no ordinary featherweight. The “Prince” or “Naz”, as he was known, served up a potent blend of knockouts, charisma and controversy – all of which has been captured in the new biopic Giant which was released in the UK over the weekend. <\/p>\n

The movie<\/a>, which hits UAE cinemas this Thursday (January 15), stars Amir El Masry as Hamed and Pierce Brosnan as his trainer Brendan Ingle. <\/p>\n

It comes more than two decades since Hamed last boxed \u2013 he retired at just 28 \u2013 but evokes memories of a dazzling career celebrated by the Arab world, cherished in the UK, and lauded by American audiences, who were particularly receptive to his trademark braggadocio.<\/p>\n

The son of Yemeni migrants, the Sheffield-born former world featherweight champion was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in Canastota, New York, in 2014 \u2013 perhaps the greatest honour that can be bestowed upon a fighter. It was richly deserved.<\/p>\n

Hamed\u2019s career transcended boxing and catapulted a brash and unfathomably cocky young man to global celebrity. Hamed didn\u2019t just shine, he was fluorescent.<\/p>\n

Yet, as they say in show business, you must leave them wanting more, and that was the one thing he could not manage. Very few boxers ever do. In fact, it\u2019s hard to think of another example of a solitary defeat proving so ruinous to a fighter\u2019s perception as Hamed\u2019s 2001 loss to a prime Marco Antonio Barrera. Given his extreme bravado, fame and disdain for rivals, perhaps it was inevitable the backlash to his eventual demise would be severe, even if a little unfair.<\/p>\n

It arrived in April 2001 after a one-sided and chastening beating at the hands of the Mexican great, himself a recipient of Canastota\u2019s hospitality, but that loss, forever remembered as the night the Prince got his comeuppance, cannot dull the brilliance of what came before.<\/p>\n

Hamed, now 51, took up boxing aged just seven when his father, concerned about his diminutive stature, sent him to Ingle\u2019s famed Sheffield gym to learn how to protect himself.<\/p>\n

By 12 he enjoyed a national reputation as one of the UK\u2019s top juniors and was already honing his idiosyncratic boxing style. By definition he was a southpaw, although as was the way of Ingle fighters, he would regularly switch stances. Hamed\u2019s style was inimitable: hands low, no conventional defence, almost entirely reliant on reflexes, with a contemptuous regard for traditional techniques.<\/p>\n

All of that was offset by spellbinding speed and a freakish punching power that would regularly get him out of trouble. <\/p>\n

Hamed threw his shots from absurd angles, comic book uppercuts, an arsenal of punches he described as his \u201crocket launchers\u201d. Blessed with ambidextrous power, Hamed could knock opponents out with either fist \u2013 and knock them out he did.<\/p>\n

Ring Magazine ranked him as the 43rd biggest puncher, pound-for-pound, in the history of boxing. Some of his opponents might have him higher. <\/p>\n

He finished his 37-fight career with 36 wins, 31 of them by knockout. He picked up the WBO featherweight crown in 1995 and held it for almost seven years. He added the WBC and IBF titles on the way and only politics denied him the opportunity to become the first man to hold all four major belts in a division.<\/p>\n

Hamed, who was also considered the lineal champion for three years, retired with a 16-1 record in world title fights, winning 14 of them by knockout.<\/p>\n

Detractors point to a lack of depth in his resume, but the likes of Manuel Medina, Tom Johnson, Kevin Kelley, Wilfredo Vazquez, Wayne McCullough, Cesar Soto and Vuyani Bungu were among a list of nine men dispatched by the Prince who at one time or another held a world title.<\/p>\n

Hamed felt he was unbeatable and his explosive style, arrogant swagger and taste for flamboyance<\/a> made him pay-per-view gold. His fights were blockbuster events in the UK, while he successfully transferred his pulling power to the US where HBO gave him a major push.<\/p>\n

Although some feel it was the start of his decline, Hamed\u2019s transatlantic debut against Kelley perfectly encapsulated his appeal. He flew to New York aboard Concorde \u2013 his arrival announced on a huge billboard in Times Square \u2013 and stoked up a media frenzy with a series of incendiary remarks.<\/p>\n

His ringwalk on the night lasted around three minutes longer than the fight itself. <\/p>\n

Although that was hardly something unusual for Hamed, who four fights later would glide halfway to the ring to face Bungu on a \u2018magic carpet\u2019 wired to the ceiling, before jumping off to dance the rest of the way alongside Puff Daddy.<\/p>\n

Confidence was never an issue, but it was the chinks emerging in his armour that made the Kelley fight so spectacular.<\/p>\n

Rounds where both men score knockdowns are rare. In the four this lasted there were two of them \u2013 the second and the fourth \u2013 and by the time Hamed scrambled Kelley\u2019s senses for good with a straight left, he himself had hit the Madison Square Garden canvas three times.<\/p>\n

During HBO\u2019s live telecast he was described as a \u201cfraud\u201d and \u201cexposed\u201d as his American opponent finished the first round on top, but by the end, colour commentator George Foreman purred as he dubbed him the \u201cPrince of Power\u201d and the \u201cPrince of Entertainment\u201d.<\/p>\n

Larry Merchant called it the \u201cHagler-Hearns of the featherweight division\u201d, and it was later named Ring Magazine\u2019s fight of the year. Naz had arrived stateside \u2013 and in a big way. <\/p>\n

After Kelley, he continued to win but outside of the ring there were problems as he split from Ingle, who passed away in 2018 aged 77, and his long-term promoter Frank Warren.<\/p>\n

The end of the road came against Barrera. Where others feared Hamed\u2019s power, the Mexican was unmoved, and while most were flummoxed by his unorthodoxy, Barrera saw opportunities.<\/p>\n

Hamed would fight once more but was never the same and hung up his gloves the following year, three months after his 28th birthday. He had earned big money \u2013 Mayweather credits him as the pathfinder for smaller men to earn huge purses \u2013 and the hunger for a rebuild wasn’t there.<\/p>\n

Despite many years away from the public eye, Hamed\u2019s significance to the sport has endured, and he has been a regular face in Saudi Arabia with the kingdom now a destination for big fights.<\/p>\n

In 2022, he starred in a promotional video for Anthony Joshua\u2019s rematch with Oleksandr Usyk, his taste for the theatrical as strong as ever, his showmanship unbowed.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There was a time before the likes of Floyd Mayweather and Manny Pacquiao when the boxing world revolved…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":401950,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[447],"tags":[703,49,48,1554,31127,82,2225,1320,31749],"class_list":{"0":"post-401949","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-film","12":"tag-sport-team","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-standard","15":"tag-story","16":"tag-yemen"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401949","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=401949"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/401949\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/401950"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=401949"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=401949"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=401949"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}