Boxing: Pierce Brosnan gives Prince Naseem Hamed the embrace he never had from Brendan Ingle
An imaginary moment gave Prince Naseem Hamed a vision of what reality could be.
The never-realized reconciliation with Brendan Ingle is a key part of Giant, the biopic about the pair.
The regret the former world champion has learned to live with is that he never had the chance to personally reconcile with his coach and mentor.
“I always wanted this to happen,” Hamed, now 51, told BBC Sport.
“But seeing it all unfold in front of me as if it had happened… I actually said to the director and the producer: ‘I wish that last scene was actually true, because I would want that.’
“Because I was with him for about 18 years.”
The new movie Giant, starring Pierce Brosnan and Amir El-Masry, retells the relationship of the trainer and the fighter. The story follows Hamed’s rise from a seven-year-old boy growing up in Sheffield to a multimillionaire global superstar under Ingle’s guidance.
The film, released in UK cinemas on January 9, looks at how Hamed became world featherweight champion at the age of 21 and the problems he later had with the Irish-born manager.
Their relationship became strained as Hamed and his family agreed that the trainer would take a 25% cut of their fight purse and began to grow angry as their numbers began to increase.
Then, in 1998, a book called The Paddy and The Prince, written by Nick Pitt, completely destroyed the relationship. They split later that year, shortly after Hamed defeated Wayne McCullough. It was a bitter separation.
As the years passed and Hamed’s career ended, he tried “many times” to reconnect with Ingle, but the legendary coach did not want to meet.
In 2018, Ingle died at the age of 77, and Hamed never got a chance to make amends. He could only pay a public tribute to the man who helped him rise to the top of the world.
“He didn’t want to have the last kind of meeting and have to clear the air with it,” Hamed said.
“I would be lying if I told you I didn’t have regrets and I didn’t care, because I have a heart and I felt like I started with it when I was seven.
“He laid out the basics and taught me things from a very young age that I would never have been able to incorporate, which I wouldn’t say happened on my own and was a God-given talent.
“I need to speak well of him, not because I have to, but because I want to.”
