FROM THE ARCHIVES: Tom Humphries witnessed the Sheffield native's unimpressive victory over Cesar Soto in Detroit which further damaged Hamed's fading reputation
NASEEM HAMED had it made really. The hype, the money, the gift. The whole enchilada. All he needed was the courage and the class to claim his piece of history.
Slowly it’s falling apart. In Detroit on Friday night another chunk of his good reputation fell away. People denounced his victory over Cesar Soto as a sham and Bob Arum said what he had seen had made him want to puke.
The plan was for the skinny kid from the back end of Sheffield to become a ratings blockbuster in the land of the free. Not to make promoters like Bob Arum nauseous.
Naseem has a lot going for him. He has that quality which must distract other boxers infernally. He brings out the worst in a person. You want to see Naseem’s nose bleed. You want to see how his tiger-stripe pants will look on the floor; you wonder how his sneering smile would look on the far side of his face.
Brendan Ingle used to say the little fighter was fearless but on Saturday night he didn’t fight fearlessly, rather he stank the place out and grabbed Cesar Soto into a desperate waltz anytime he felt threatened. He looked like a fighter who has lost his verve.
He’d come to Detroit and hit a rich seam in terms of gullible fans. The huge Arab population of the city, starved of its own heroes, welcomed him with a sea of open arms and fields of gently waving cheque books.
Naseem pleased them. Naseem made it clear that Allah takes his phone calls. The calls are apparently frequent and respectful. Naseem promised them a show, not just an exposition of his religious beliefs, not just a few sparklers and dance moves. He promised a knockout, a humiliation, a dance on the chest of his slain opponent.
Naseem came grooving into the ring at the Joe Louis Arena, shifting himself to the acoustics of his latest entrance extravaganza consisting of $100 worth of fireworks, half an acre of tinfoil and a speaker volume knob that goes all the way up to 11. They crowd chanted his name and reacted as if this was the most sophisticated piece of theatre they’d seen in a long time.
It was Detroit, so maybe it was after all. By the time the fight, if we may use the word loosely, was over the hall was filled with booing and there were the usual little cameos of ugliness which seem to follow Naseem. Police waded into the crowd a couple of times before they shuffled out into the chill Michigan night.
Naseem’s people filled the ring, tracksuited little hip hop elves gettin’ respect from the audience, waving to their cronies with the elaborate staccato semaphore of their fingers.
Everyone made a big show of getting in touch with Allah to thank him for his intervention in the fisticuffs business. It was a sad spectacle. The problem with Naseem is that from entrance to exit he lacks class. Nothing except his bravado could redeem him. In the ring he has lost his bravado and all that left is the leer.
The essence of boxing is pornographic. You take away the fireworks and the goons in the tuxedos and the two-bit grifters pulling up in white limos hired for the night because they have heart -shaped rear windows and in essence you have two working -class guys getting money for hitting each other. They slap each other up for the entertainment of others.
Boxers keep their dignity though through their own codes. They talk the weary trash-talk that nobody in or out of boxing heeds and they ride along with the tasteless hype and the shifty entourages, with dozens of hands shaking them down. Yet boxer to boxer, working man to working man. there is decency and honour.
There are the things they share in the loneliness of the ring which bond them. You see it with McCullough all the time. Looking his opponent in the eye, the little nods of contrition for an inadvertent low blow, the raised eyebrows which ask questions. “You okay?” “Ready to go again.” The honesty of the trade.
In Naseem you see none of it. He taunts, he hisses religiously, he demeans his opponent, he leers and mugs and clowns. No part of the act he partakes in with his fellow boxer is a shared experience.
It’s a troubling phenomenon. Most of Naseem’s schtick is harmless and is old hat. Yet the nastiness he brings with him into the ring allied to the fundamental dishonesty evident in Friday night’s farce makes him unattractive just now.
It was interesting to note the speed at which the HBO executives who have invested $46 million in gambling that Naz will charm the US were among the media talking up the fight as soon as it was over on Friday. Hamed’s performances against Kevin Kelley in New York, Wayne McCullough in Atlantic City and now Cesar Soto have been uniformly awful. Worse is the failure of the Sheffield bad-boy act to translate across the Atlantic.
There was much paper and pug talk last week that, with Oscar de La Hoya dethroned temporarily at the moment, Naz was the chap to step into the boots of boxing’s Prince Charming and open up the little guys weight divisions to a mass audience.
As such, it was excruciatingly embarrassing to watch Hamed’s appearance on the Late Night with Conan O’Brien Show on US TV a couple of weeks ago. Hamed chose unwisely to enter the set by means of one of his trademark ‘spectacular entrances’. He shuffled and mugged his way down the steps through the audience grimacing like a kid who was told to go the toilet before he came out but didn’t.
He took so long dancing and shuffling down the steps that he used up most of his interview time which was a mercy because slumped in the chair with one leg over the arm, he tossed off a few dopey, arrogant answers to simple civil questions while sneering and leering at the audience. De la Hoya. a smooth and entertaining veteran of the talk shows, can hardly have been fearing a precipitous fall off in his bookings.
That’s the way of things with Naseem just now. All hat and no cattle. For a kid from Wincobank scooping the sort of money he has pocketed probably seems like a win but when he’s old and stooped he will be a forgotten sideshow.
