'A prime and hungry Hamed rips Barrera a new arse hole' - When was his prime because he was still a young guy when he fought Barerra. If your talking about his prime being around the Steve Robinson fight, i'd agree, but he was fighting guys like Robinson thats a million miles away from Barerra .. Its sometimes misleading to talk about a fighter's prime being a time when he was looking good against average fighters, his legacy depended on beating Barrera and he got badly beaten. He's a legend to me but he never proved he was a true great, i wish he did ..
Oh, please, that distinction belongs to Michael Carbajal & Humberto Gonzalez. They singlehandedly brought the little guys exposure and proved them viable. They were the first flyweights to headline a PPV card. They were also the first flyweights to get a guaranteed mil for a fight. Minus them there'd be no ****in' Naseem.
When we talk about 'prime' in the context of Naseem Hamed its hard to say when that actually was. I think his most accomplished performance came against Bungu (which I believe was 2000). That was probably his physical prime, but in terms of the physical and the mental being in sync, you have to say sometime before the split with Ingle. Maybe around the time of the Tom Johnson fight was peak/prime Naz.
I think that he had just had enough,leaving his brother Raith in charge of his affairs was a mistake loads of people at the time said he was almost impossible to do buisness with.I dont think the people around him at the end cared what Naz wanted they were all just there for the money and Naz was just getting loads of grief because of them.He went out with a win,millions in the bank and only ever lost to a legend.I just think he he`d had enough of fighting and the buisness side of boxing.
When Hamed fought Kevin Kelly at MSG, that was one of the best fights I had ever seen. I sure hated to see him retire, but he was never as good a fighter when he hired Suarez to train him. Suarez tried to make a ballet dancer out of him and Suarez did the same thing to Frietas!
If anyone watches the fly on the wall docmentary "Big fight Little Prince" ,you'll see how pathetic his preparation for the Barrera fight was. I even remember seeing a chandelier above his boxing ring! Whilst Barrera was chopping trees in the mountains, Hamed was arranging the laundary rota.
Hamed packed in because his hands were in a bad way...:think I also think that the MAB defeat and his preperation for that contest was way off...:yep
Actually, when I joined this site I was TheGoldenHoya, then I changed to HOYA-UK, and now I'm El Cepillo. And you have a problem with this why?
I do buy this "bad hands" excuse, to a certain degree. Although I think the end of his lucrative sponsonship deals/contract with Adidas and HBO, and the realisation that he wasn't as great as he thought, were the primary reasons why he packed it in.
Naz was well flush regardless so I dont think it was the greenbacks that were a causation factor in his retirement... When he fought MAB he was well past his best, that does not take anything away from MAB... he is the only fighter I believe that would have had Naz's number anytime they would have fought, once, twice, one hundred times....:yep For me it was his hands, I also believe that when he left Brendan things were never the same...:yep