PRINCE NASEEM HAMED

Prince Naseem could well be the best British boxer of all time …he was a superstar! He brought glamour, excitement and lot of attention on himself (obvs!) as well as the lower-weight divisions. He transcended the sport of boxing and the magnitude of his cultural status for me was cemented when the hip-hop artists NAS sung about Naseem in his song, with the lyrics - “I can't forget how I met you, you thought I was a boxer/ Prince Naseem, but I'm a mobster, Nas from Queens”.

Naseem Hamed started out in Sheffield, aged seven, under tutelage of the legendary Brendan Ingle, fighting out of the Wincobank gym. His flashy, southpaw style and pure talent made him stand out early on. Brendan believed Naz could’ve been world champion at Flyweight all the way up to Super-Middleweight, because he was that good. But after Naz won his first world championship in 1995, the WBO title at Featherweight (a division he hadn’t ever even fought at before that fight vs Steve Robinson), Brendan found it difficult to manage Naz’ uncompromising bravado.

Naz and Brendan parted company and there was then a chapter with Oscar Suarez, but in 1999 Naz partnered with trainer Emanuel Steward. “Manny” Steward had trained 27 world champions and was the top-gun-for-hire in the world of boxing.

In 2001 Naz came face-to-face with a prime Antonio Barrera - this was to be his only career loss. It’s hard to think of a better example of a solitary defeat proving so ruinous to a fighter’s perception. Given his extreme bravado, fame and disdain for rivals, perhaps it was inevitable the backlash to his eventual demise would be severe. But that loss, forever remembered as the night the Prince got his comeuppance, cannot dull the neon brilliance of what came before.

We all loved Naz. We all probably knew that he’d bend our nose out of shape (pun intended!) if we were to hang out with him socially, but we loved him for his unwavering confidence, his brash showmanship and the entertaining fighting he gave us. His ring entrances were worth every penny of the box office fee. He famously entered once on a flying carpet and he always did his signature, front-somersault into the ring, dressed in something eye-catching. He knew he was going to win and he was going to have fun doing it.

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 retired with a 16-1 record in world title fights, winning 14 of them by knockout.