Naseem Hamed v Kevin Kelley, WBO featherweight title: Madison Square Garden, New York, 1997

‘This young punk arrives on the scene, and everybody is down on their knees licking his boots.’

It was the Monday before the fight and Hamed was behind closed doors at a fancy boxing gym called Blue Velvet in New York. The place was years in front of any curves. Hamed and all his people were there, but nobody else. I was tucked in under a speedball, watching.

There was a bang at the door, somebody opened it and Michael Jackson came in. Hamed had been at his Neverland ranch in October. Jacko had on full Jacko kit: gloves, hat, shiny shoes. The works. I wrote: ‘In the ring, Hamed performed some of Jackson’s dance routines and at the ring’s edge, the singer squealed with delight. It was weird cabaret.’ That is the breaking story you need in your paper over your eggs in the morning. Hamed stayed in the ring, moving, shadow boxing, smiling and shouting out at his friend. Then the pair were doing a synchronised moonwalk – one in the ring and one outside. The most important fight of Hamed’s career was about 100 hours away. Jacko removed his smog mask when he was ringside, left his shades on and took his gloves off to shake hands with the Hamed team. ‘He never does that,’ his security guy told me. And, yes, Jackson was a strange-looking dude.

At the Blue Velvet, there was a veteran trainer called Victor Machado and he had a wonderful line. He told me: ‘This kid, the Prince, he can do the double-fake quicker than a snake, man. He is an old fighter.’ Who finds these men from central casting and their quotes? Get in, love it.

Hamed’s boxing life in New York was more settled than normal. Hamed was not sharing a room, just a suite with Thomas Bradley and Johnny Nelson. The rest, including Anas Oweida, Kevin Adamson and Clifton Mitchell, were in rooms down the hall. There had still been long, long nights. They were all fighters; they had all known Naz when he had nothing. In New York there was endless talk of his new super deal, worth $40 million. It was a deal with Frank Warren, and it specifically excluded Don King’s involvement. 

The training team of Brendan Ingle and his son, John, were a couple of floors below. There was a rift growing, make no mistake. In New York it was strictly business. Welcome to Naz’s world.

On the Wednesday of fight week, Brendan Ingle was in great form. Inside boxing’s most revered venue, he conjured up the sport’s greatest men when he talked about the boy he had found. Brendan Ingle in the Garden. I wonder now if that was his first time, the first time for the kid from Dublin, a struggling and jobbing pro boxer in the Sixties and Seventies. Ingle had fought hard men in hard venues, once mixed it with an Olympic gold medal winner and walked away from boxing in 1973 with 19 wins and 14 defeats. He never had a single easy fight. He knew fighters, that was his trick.

‘All the Naz fella does is what the great fighters in history have done. He has taken a bit of Willie Pep, a bit of Kid Gavilan and a bit of Sugar Ray Robinson and turned them upside down, inside out to get his style.’ Ingle, the great whispering guru, played his part. A few people knew that the relationship was falling apart; the week in New York was odd in so many ways.

And there was more testimony. Hamed and Ingle, in an attempt to break clear of the New York fight rumour mill, had gone over to Jersey City to train at the Rocky Marciano gym. They had met Rocky’s brother, Lou, and he had watched a session. ‘The kid can fight,’ he declared.

Kelley had also done his best to raise the fight’s profile. He had lost just twice in 50 fights, held a version of the world title and was not happy with being a supporting actor in his beloved city. He had said some mildly offensive things. It all helped shift some tickets; it never helped his chances. The expected box office was about 7,000 tickets and that would have been a success.

‘This young punk arrives on the scene, and everybody is down on their knees licking his boots,’ Kelley said when we gathered round him. ‘If Hamed ever finds himself lost on a New York street and he tries any of his acts, guys that couldn’t kill him with their bare hands will shoot him.’ Late on the Monday night, at a gym out on Long Island, Kelley and his trainer, Phil Borgia, were going over the final details. It was all about pressure, and it was dependent on Hamed not being ready. Hamed was ready: he was on weight at that time, strong and ready. Kelley had fallen for the stories about Hamed not preparing seriously. It had been a Brendan Ingle con. ‘He has put himself in a bad place and there is no way back. Listen to his voice,’ Hamed said.

It also needs to be said that Kelley was getting $600,000 for fighting the ‘punk’. It was by far the highest purse of Kelley’s career. Hamed was only 23 when he left his dressing room on that Friday night at the Garden. He was unbeaten in 28, with 26 knockouts.

It was a crazy fight. It finished in the fourth with Kelley counted out. Hamed had been officially dropped three times and Kelley three or four times. Naz touched down a couple of other times. Hamed was dropped near the end of the first and was clearly still hurt during the break. Ingle worked furiously. At the start of the second, Hamed touched down, got up and was then dropped. It looked like it was all over – the money, the fame, the career. The Garden had taken another boxer; in 2019, it would take Anthony Joshua. Kelley had two minutes and ten seconds left to change history. One minute later, Kelley was flat on his back and Hamed was standing over him and smiling. I’m not inventing this stuff – inside five minutes of boxing, Hamed had been over three times and Kelley was looking up at the lights.

They both survived to the fourth. In the fourth, Kelley was over again, this time heavily, and then he caught Hamed, and Hamed went down. Then Hamed dropped Kelley for the last time. The native New Yorker beat the count but stared at oblivion and the count reached ten. It was over. There had been real fear in the Hamed camp.

‘We all saw what went wrong; I just hope people recognise what went right,’ said Warren at ringside. ‘An unknown from Sheffield went to New York, set a record for featherweights at the box office, attracted 12,000, climbed up from three knockdowns to take out the local hero in the fourth. That’s what happened and that’s a bloody good British success story.’ Hard to disagree with that.

Naseem Hamed: The papers in New York were harsh. ‘He came in like Kid Confetti and fought like Kid Counterfeit’ was one headline. Warren is right, it was a success. Hamed sold nearly 5,000 more tickets than Sugar Ray Leonard had done, 2,000 more than Roy Jones and he did it in the middle of a bleak winter and just six days before Christmas. There was a fallout, there always is. ‘Do you think I will ever be that bad again?’ Hamed asked me on the Saturday after we had watched the fight in his suite. I hoped not.

 

Steve Bunce’s Around the World in 80 Fights: A Lifetime’s Journey to the Heart of Boxing includes, among 79 others, his retelling of the memorable and dramatic fight between Naseem Hamed and Kevin Kelley in 1997, below. It was shortlisted for the 2025 Charles Tyrwhitt sports entertainment book of the year award, and is out in paperback on May 22.