Where did it all go wrong, Naz?
Posted: 31 Aug 2003, 13:34
Boxing wasn't good to Naseem Hamed after it all started to go wrong before and after his points win over Wayne McCullough in 1998. It was the worst showing of his career up to then, but he looked even poorer in contests with Cesar Soto, Paul Ingle, Manuel Calvo and Marco Antonio Barrera afterwards. Even a spectacular finish against Augie Sanchez couldn't wipe out the fragility he displayed leading up to the finish.
Now of course it looks like he will never fight again.
But McCullough was the turning point. A disintergrating relationship with mentor Brendan Ingle finally collapsed in the wake of the fight. Worse, Naz assembled the British press before the fight and took turns to verbally abuse them one by one, reducing some to tears.
Amidst the nightmare, there was a fight.
In all honesty, there wasn't much of a fight to report from Atlantic City on 31 October, 1998. After surprising challenger Wayne McCullough with a sneak attack in the opening moments of round one, Prince Naseem Hamed, World Boxing Organisation featherweight champion, slipped into auto-pilot.
The first six minutes of his unanimous decision victory were spent mainly posing, in the third round he made his strongest effort to remove the challenger, and when that didn't happen for him Hamed danced and toyed with McCullough for the remainder of the fight. 'Amateurish' was the word I heard most often from other press-row occupants who clearly were not pleased with the southpaw superstar's contribution - but then they hadn't been all week.
At the cavernous old Boardwalk Convention Center on Halloween Eve, the devastating puncher resembled a non-hitter. If there was a moral victor, it was McCullough. Only Michael Katz of the New York Daily News had predicted that the challenger would last the distance; most had no real argument with Hamed when he predicted that the Irishman would be stopped in round three - that seemed entirely feasible. And many had also agreed with Hamed's trainer Brendan Ingle, who believed that McCullough's style was made for Hamed and that it could all be over inside the opening three minutes.
McCullough's wife and manager, Cheryl, appeared to be expecting the worst. Standing behind her husband's corner, she looked as white as a ghost, even whiter than Manchester light-welter Ricky Hatton, whose impressive body punching brought him another first-round win on the undercard.
People were genuinely concerned for Mrs McCullough, who looked as though she might faint through anticipation of the fate that was about to befall the father of her baby daughter, Wynona.
"I'm okay," mouthed Cheryl to me. Plainly she was not.
Even when Wayne returned to his corner at the end of round three, his arms raised in triumph at having survived Hamed's prediction, his wife's applause seemed only half-hearted. But by the halfway stage she was pumping her fists in the air and cheering as much as any of the thousands of Irish people in the arena. At no point did McCullough look as though he might win the fight, but neither did it seem likely he would be seriously hurt. Clearly Hamed's mind was not on the job. If he couldn't take McCullough out with one of his big, slashing uppercuts, then he couldn't be bothered to take him out at all, it seemed. He had no interest in working for openings, nor was he inclined to punch to the body - a terrible oversight when one recalls how McCullough virtually doubled over in pain when Daniel Zaragoza dug a right-hander into his ribs during the Ulsterman's January 1997 losing challenge to the then WBC super-bantam champ.
And there was nothing that Brendan Ingle could do to try and instil some focus into the champion. The one-minute breaks between rounds were utterly demeaning to the veteran trainer. Not only had he been demoted, with his sons John and Dominic having been handed the official reigns, but Ingle soon came to realise how meaningless was his new role as 'corner adviser'; Hamed made an unnecessarily cruel show of how little Ingle's reading of the fight meant to him, staring into space as the Sheffield boxing guru made his points and even pushing Brendan back, telling him to "back off and give me some space!"
It was as ugly as the fight to watch.
To my mind, it was Hamed's treatment of the man who developed him that most exemplified his appalling attitude for which he has been roundly criticised - not a few spats with journalists. Ingle did not deserve to be shown such disrespect, disdain even, and I'd be surprised if he were willing to work with Hamed again. Ingle's pride has been battered enough and for this, if not for anything else, Hamed should be ashamed of himself.
McCullough, though, had reason to be proud when the final bell rang. Lasting the distance with Hamed is something that only Peter Buckley, in a November 1992 six-rounder and Vincenzo Belcastro had achieved previously. However, his pleas for a rematch should be ignored. Sure, he broke Hamed's long knockout streak, dating back 18 fights to the commanding unanimous decision over Belcastro for the European bantamweight title in May 1995. And yes, by virtue of the fact that he kept coming forward, whilst Hamed kept backing off, McCullough did make the fight.
But the challenger was so concerned with not being caught by one of Hamed's bombs, preoccupied with keeping his gloves glued to the sides of his face to form a watertight guard, that McCullough simply was not relaxed enough to punch with any accuracy; and when a fighter lacks one-punch KO capability, as does McCullough (14 stoppage wins from 22 fights, none above bantamweight, against the one loss to Zaragoza), that is a major minus point.
The so-called computer punch-counters had him throwing 740 punches to Hamed's 742, but Hamed landed 340 while the Irishman connected with exactly half that amount. Those sort of figures do not dethrone champions. However, rather than Hamed finishing McCullough's career as he had promised he would do, he has in fact breathed fresh life into it. The Las Vegas-based, Belfast-born former Olympian is now a marketable commodity once more and announced that his future would be in the super-bantam division.
Hamed, though, has done his reputation no good whatsoever. The third fight of his deal with American subscription giants Home Box Office, his second on American soil, was a huge disappointment. Hamed's viewing figures for the Kevin Kelley and Wilfredo Vazquez fights had impressed the network, and this fight brought HBO's best ratings of the year for a non-heavyweight, non-pay-per-view fight, knocking Oscar De La Hoya vs Patrick Charpentier into second place. But network chief Seth Abraham was cautious afterwards, stating that the impact of this performance would not be felt until the viewing figures for Hamed's next fight became known. Those figures will be revealing indeed.
HBO once more spent large amounts on publicising Hamed, who they believe has the potential to be absolutely massive in America. The network took out full-page colour adverts in the New York Times and Rolling Stone magazine, with smaller ads elsewhere and constant TV trailers. Their efforts cannot be faulted and were deserving of a little more co-operation from the subject of their publicity campaign. But still there was a worryingly small crowd in the arena. Of the 8,138 in attendance, it appeared that around a third of that number were McCullough supporters, 1,000 of whom had made the trip from Ireland. Had Hamed been fighting someone without McCullough's fan base, say a Puerto Rican such as his mandatory contender Angel Vasquez, who maintained his unbeaten run on the undercard, the huge old venue might have been embarrassingly empty.
It seems to me that America is unsure what to make of Hamed. I get the impression that HBO would like nothing better than to wheel him out on nights such as this, Halloween, and turn his fights into theme evenings.
There was a furore over the initial plan to have Hamed enter the arena through a graveyard resplendent with tombstones marked with the names of his championship opponents. And the outrage expressed by the British press contingent was totally justified. The idea really was in the worst possible taste. This is boxing, not wrestling, where the likes of the undertaker can revel in death-like imagery. In boxing, people do die. Initially, HBO's Lou DiBella and Larry Merchant tried to defend the plan. "It's Halloween," they offered, as though this ostensibly American tradition erased the deaths of too many fighters over the years. "Humour obviously does not cross the Atlantic," sneered Merchant who appeared to be feeling rather dismissive about it all when initially he was questioned on the subject, as though he were replying to criticism about his choice of tie for a broadcast. The Yanks and the Brits really were speaking different languages. But death bridges all chasms and thankfully, particularly for the surviving families of fighters who have given their lives to this brutal sport, HBO quickly relented after being challenged over their plans.
To give the American TV men the benefit of the doubt, British boxing has in recent years had an abnormally high percentage of serious brain injuries compared with the rest of the world. Consequently, the British boxing fraternity may be more sensitive to the issue than our colleagues overseas. But none of us who make our livings from the sport should ever forget that boxing is a life-or-death business.
Hopefully this lesson has been learned and such tasteless hype tactics will not be considered in future.
Further evidence of the differences between British and American perspectives came when I spoke to HBO commentator Jim Lampley after the fight. When I asked him whether he felt HBO had got value for money, he assumed I was talking about the firework display that heralded Hamed's entrance. I cut the conversation short rather sharply. There didn't seem much point in continuing after that.
BRITISH PRESS ANTI-REACTION
IAN CHADBAND, Evening Standard: "If Hamed is going to scream the odds about what mayhem he will wreak while conquering America, then he has to accept the barbs when he fails to deliver as miserably as he did in this, the 11th and least satisfying defence of his WBO featherweight crown."
KEN JONES, The Independent: "The truth about Hamed is that he has learned very little about the fundamentals of boxing and lacks the humility to seek improvement."
KEVIN FRANCIS, The Star: "Hamed completely failed to convince an increasingly-sceptical American audience that he IS as great as he makes himself out to be. He did not do himself any justice in a fight where a convincing victory for his American TV paymasters was the order of the day."
BOB MEE, Independent On Sunday: "This week showed how bad feeling within a fighter's camp can spill over. I would not want Hamed to bite his tongue and hide his feelings every moment of the day, but the lack of professionalism he showed in Atlantic City portrayed him as a man with little or no compassion for those outside his immediate family and sycophantic entourage. And that's a shame because it's probably not the case."
SRIKUMAR SEN, The Times: "It seemed that no one in the Hamed camp had told him that he had not exactly been a big hit, but when he reads the papers he will not find their remarks complimentary. There were many ringsiders who thought the scoring of the judges was far too generous. Some even thought McCullough had done enough to win."
PAUL HAYWARD, The Telegraph: "They spent $70,000 on a mock graveyard for Naseem Hamed to dance through on his way to the ring. On this evidence they could use it to bury the idea that he is on an inexorable fox-trot to greatness. From the outset, it was the most wretchedly fraught and chaotic boxing event many of us present have ever attended."
COLIN HART, The Sun: "Down the years it has been my privilege and pleasure to travel with men like Ken Buchanan, John Conteh, Joe Bugner, Frank Bruno, Lloyd Honeyghan, Alan Minter, Billy Schwer and the late Johnny Owen, who all fought for world titles in America. You could not get a more diverse bunch. Most of them lost, but all were magnificent ambassadors for Britain. Now I know exactly what trainer Brendan Ingle meant when he described Naz as obnoxious and abusive in his recently published book."
JOHN RAWLING, The Guardian: "It was hard to imagine anyone outside the Sheffield narcissist's immediate family and friends thinking he had done anything to enhance his reputation on either side of the Atlantic. Alienating newspaper reporters is one thing, but provoking the displeasure of the companies who televise his contests is another example of an out-of-control ego which now seems to run unchecked."
JAMES LAWTON, The Express: "The truth is Naseem's 'style' has become not so much an adornment as a smoke screen - one that is frankly no longer working.
Now of course it looks like he will never fight again.
But McCullough was the turning point. A disintergrating relationship with mentor Brendan Ingle finally collapsed in the wake of the fight. Worse, Naz assembled the British press before the fight and took turns to verbally abuse them one by one, reducing some to tears.
Amidst the nightmare, there was a fight.
In all honesty, there wasn't much of a fight to report from Atlantic City on 31 October, 1998. After surprising challenger Wayne McCullough with a sneak attack in the opening moments of round one, Prince Naseem Hamed, World Boxing Organisation featherweight champion, slipped into auto-pilot.
The first six minutes of his unanimous decision victory were spent mainly posing, in the third round he made his strongest effort to remove the challenger, and when that didn't happen for him Hamed danced and toyed with McCullough for the remainder of the fight. 'Amateurish' was the word I heard most often from other press-row occupants who clearly were not pleased with the southpaw superstar's contribution - but then they hadn't been all week.
At the cavernous old Boardwalk Convention Center on Halloween Eve, the devastating puncher resembled a non-hitter. If there was a moral victor, it was McCullough. Only Michael Katz of the New York Daily News had predicted that the challenger would last the distance; most had no real argument with Hamed when he predicted that the Irishman would be stopped in round three - that seemed entirely feasible. And many had also agreed with Hamed's trainer Brendan Ingle, who believed that McCullough's style was made for Hamed and that it could all be over inside the opening three minutes.
McCullough's wife and manager, Cheryl, appeared to be expecting the worst. Standing behind her husband's corner, she looked as white as a ghost, even whiter than Manchester light-welter Ricky Hatton, whose impressive body punching brought him another first-round win on the undercard.
People were genuinely concerned for Mrs McCullough, who looked as though she might faint through anticipation of the fate that was about to befall the father of her baby daughter, Wynona.
"I'm okay," mouthed Cheryl to me. Plainly she was not.
Even when Wayne returned to his corner at the end of round three, his arms raised in triumph at having survived Hamed's prediction, his wife's applause seemed only half-hearted. But by the halfway stage she was pumping her fists in the air and cheering as much as any of the thousands of Irish people in the arena. At no point did McCullough look as though he might win the fight, but neither did it seem likely he would be seriously hurt. Clearly Hamed's mind was not on the job. If he couldn't take McCullough out with one of his big, slashing uppercuts, then he couldn't be bothered to take him out at all, it seemed. He had no interest in working for openings, nor was he inclined to punch to the body - a terrible oversight when one recalls how McCullough virtually doubled over in pain when Daniel Zaragoza dug a right-hander into his ribs during the Ulsterman's January 1997 losing challenge to the then WBC super-bantam champ.
And there was nothing that Brendan Ingle could do to try and instil some focus into the champion. The one-minute breaks between rounds were utterly demeaning to the veteran trainer. Not only had he been demoted, with his sons John and Dominic having been handed the official reigns, but Ingle soon came to realise how meaningless was his new role as 'corner adviser'; Hamed made an unnecessarily cruel show of how little Ingle's reading of the fight meant to him, staring into space as the Sheffield boxing guru made his points and even pushing Brendan back, telling him to "back off and give me some space!"
It was as ugly as the fight to watch.
To my mind, it was Hamed's treatment of the man who developed him that most exemplified his appalling attitude for which he has been roundly criticised - not a few spats with journalists. Ingle did not deserve to be shown such disrespect, disdain even, and I'd be surprised if he were willing to work with Hamed again. Ingle's pride has been battered enough and for this, if not for anything else, Hamed should be ashamed of himself.
McCullough, though, had reason to be proud when the final bell rang. Lasting the distance with Hamed is something that only Peter Buckley, in a November 1992 six-rounder and Vincenzo Belcastro had achieved previously. However, his pleas for a rematch should be ignored. Sure, he broke Hamed's long knockout streak, dating back 18 fights to the commanding unanimous decision over Belcastro for the European bantamweight title in May 1995. And yes, by virtue of the fact that he kept coming forward, whilst Hamed kept backing off, McCullough did make the fight.
But the challenger was so concerned with not being caught by one of Hamed's bombs, preoccupied with keeping his gloves glued to the sides of his face to form a watertight guard, that McCullough simply was not relaxed enough to punch with any accuracy; and when a fighter lacks one-punch KO capability, as does McCullough (14 stoppage wins from 22 fights, none above bantamweight, against the one loss to Zaragoza), that is a major minus point.
The so-called computer punch-counters had him throwing 740 punches to Hamed's 742, but Hamed landed 340 while the Irishman connected with exactly half that amount. Those sort of figures do not dethrone champions. However, rather than Hamed finishing McCullough's career as he had promised he would do, he has in fact breathed fresh life into it. The Las Vegas-based, Belfast-born former Olympian is now a marketable commodity once more and announced that his future would be in the super-bantam division.
Hamed, though, has done his reputation no good whatsoever. The third fight of his deal with American subscription giants Home Box Office, his second on American soil, was a huge disappointment. Hamed's viewing figures for the Kevin Kelley and Wilfredo Vazquez fights had impressed the network, and this fight brought HBO's best ratings of the year for a non-heavyweight, non-pay-per-view fight, knocking Oscar De La Hoya vs Patrick Charpentier into second place. But network chief Seth Abraham was cautious afterwards, stating that the impact of this performance would not be felt until the viewing figures for Hamed's next fight became known. Those figures will be revealing indeed.
HBO once more spent large amounts on publicising Hamed, who they believe has the potential to be absolutely massive in America. The network took out full-page colour adverts in the New York Times and Rolling Stone magazine, with smaller ads elsewhere and constant TV trailers. Their efforts cannot be faulted and were deserving of a little more co-operation from the subject of their publicity campaign. But still there was a worryingly small crowd in the arena. Of the 8,138 in attendance, it appeared that around a third of that number were McCullough supporters, 1,000 of whom had made the trip from Ireland. Had Hamed been fighting someone without McCullough's fan base, say a Puerto Rican such as his mandatory contender Angel Vasquez, who maintained his unbeaten run on the undercard, the huge old venue might have been embarrassingly empty.
It seems to me that America is unsure what to make of Hamed. I get the impression that HBO would like nothing better than to wheel him out on nights such as this, Halloween, and turn his fights into theme evenings.
There was a furore over the initial plan to have Hamed enter the arena through a graveyard resplendent with tombstones marked with the names of his championship opponents. And the outrage expressed by the British press contingent was totally justified. The idea really was in the worst possible taste. This is boxing, not wrestling, where the likes of the undertaker can revel in death-like imagery. In boxing, people do die. Initially, HBO's Lou DiBella and Larry Merchant tried to defend the plan. "It's Halloween," they offered, as though this ostensibly American tradition erased the deaths of too many fighters over the years. "Humour obviously does not cross the Atlantic," sneered Merchant who appeared to be feeling rather dismissive about it all when initially he was questioned on the subject, as though he were replying to criticism about his choice of tie for a broadcast. The Yanks and the Brits really were speaking different languages. But death bridges all chasms and thankfully, particularly for the surviving families of fighters who have given their lives to this brutal sport, HBO quickly relented after being challenged over their plans.
To give the American TV men the benefit of the doubt, British boxing has in recent years had an abnormally high percentage of serious brain injuries compared with the rest of the world. Consequently, the British boxing fraternity may be more sensitive to the issue than our colleagues overseas. But none of us who make our livings from the sport should ever forget that boxing is a life-or-death business.
Hopefully this lesson has been learned and such tasteless hype tactics will not be considered in future.
Further evidence of the differences between British and American perspectives came when I spoke to HBO commentator Jim Lampley after the fight. When I asked him whether he felt HBO had got value for money, he assumed I was talking about the firework display that heralded Hamed's entrance. I cut the conversation short rather sharply. There didn't seem much point in continuing after that.
BRITISH PRESS ANTI-REACTION
IAN CHADBAND, Evening Standard: "If Hamed is going to scream the odds about what mayhem he will wreak while conquering America, then he has to accept the barbs when he fails to deliver as miserably as he did in this, the 11th and least satisfying defence of his WBO featherweight crown."
KEN JONES, The Independent: "The truth about Hamed is that he has learned very little about the fundamentals of boxing and lacks the humility to seek improvement."
KEVIN FRANCIS, The Star: "Hamed completely failed to convince an increasingly-sceptical American audience that he IS as great as he makes himself out to be. He did not do himself any justice in a fight where a convincing victory for his American TV paymasters was the order of the day."
BOB MEE, Independent On Sunday: "This week showed how bad feeling within a fighter's camp can spill over. I would not want Hamed to bite his tongue and hide his feelings every moment of the day, but the lack of professionalism he showed in Atlantic City portrayed him as a man with little or no compassion for those outside his immediate family and sycophantic entourage. And that's a shame because it's probably not the case."
SRIKUMAR SEN, The Times: "It seemed that no one in the Hamed camp had told him that he had not exactly been a big hit, but when he reads the papers he will not find their remarks complimentary. There were many ringsiders who thought the scoring of the judges was far too generous. Some even thought McCullough had done enough to win."
PAUL HAYWARD, The Telegraph: "They spent $70,000 on a mock graveyard for Naseem Hamed to dance through on his way to the ring. On this evidence they could use it to bury the idea that he is on an inexorable fox-trot to greatness. From the outset, it was the most wretchedly fraught and chaotic boxing event many of us present have ever attended."
COLIN HART, The Sun: "Down the years it has been my privilege and pleasure to travel with men like Ken Buchanan, John Conteh, Joe Bugner, Frank Bruno, Lloyd Honeyghan, Alan Minter, Billy Schwer and the late Johnny Owen, who all fought for world titles in America. You could not get a more diverse bunch. Most of them lost, but all were magnificent ambassadors for Britain. Now I know exactly what trainer Brendan Ingle meant when he described Naz as obnoxious and abusive in his recently published book."
JOHN RAWLING, The Guardian: "It was hard to imagine anyone outside the Sheffield narcissist's immediate family and friends thinking he had done anything to enhance his reputation on either side of the Atlantic. Alienating newspaper reporters is one thing, but provoking the displeasure of the companies who televise his contests is another example of an out-of-control ego which now seems to run unchecked."
JAMES LAWTON, The Express: "The truth is Naseem's 'style' has become not so much an adornment as a smoke screen - one that is frankly no longer working.
