Some important fights ! Just read that he was hurt badly and had to retire... How good was the guy ? I will take advantage to the fact that we have many knowleadagle british posters here, I know nothing abou tthis guy, can´t remember much at all of his fights... but nothing is better than ask people that are close to the guy and lived their careers and so on.
I would mention his fights with Manuel Medina and Billy Hardy as two decent fights of his to check out.
I thought he was an above average world champion with very solid fundamentals good pressure fighter with an exciting style. His best performance for me was his win over Colin McMillan, who was probably one of the most talented fighters we've had in UK. Ingle was a force of nature that night and beat a very talented McMillian in a great fight probably one of the better fights you'll see between two British fighters. His wins over Junior Jones, Manuel Medina, in two other great fights proved he was world class but maybe could be a tad vulnerable at times aswell ? He was pretty clearly in front vs Medina and then started celebrating in the last round, and then seemed to hit a brick wall as Medina came somewhat close to stopping him in the last round. Vs Naseem Hamed he gave a good effort and actually from memory had a very good 10th round where Hamed seemed a bit troubled, but Hamed was at his peak and just a bit too good for him no shame in that. In Ingle's last fight vs Botile i think his aggressive style and all the hard fights had caught up to him. I also heard he suffered multiple injuries in training for the fight and also couldn't make the weight properly. All those things combined were a recipe for a disaster and as we all know Ingle suffered a blood clot that ended his career. Overall i would say Ingle and Hodkinson are very comparable, two exciting Featherweights from UK who fought in a very aggressive manner that didn't have long at the top. But showed that they were world class and above average world champions at their best. Funny enough they also ended up with similar records 23-3 and 22-3.
He was a good, solid, tidy pressure fighter and a respectable titlist in a roughly similar class to Hodkinson, Medina, Goyo Vargas, Tom Johnson etc but not one who was good enough to last long at the top with his style and constant struggle to make the weight. He was huge at the weight ( a strength initially and then a tragic career ending curse) and strong with an excellent work rate and the heart of a lion, capable of being very tidy and fundamentally sound with clean two fisted punching, a tight guard and an effective bob/weave approach. He never seemed though like he had full mastery or command of the latter skill and tended to get sloppy if pushed back and as fights went on, becoming more upright, square on and technically erratic. Typical of that era of British featherweights in terms of being a good world level fighter but with weaknesses that limited him, roughly similar to McMillan, Hodkinson, Robinson etc. Different weaknesses albeit. The Hamed, Medina and Jones fights were wars that took a lot out of him and ended his prime quickly. He'd been killing himself for years making the weight even before the Botile disaster and his prep was disrupted further by injury. I was at that fight and it was ****ing horrible. It had a bad impact on Botile too and both of their lives spiralled afterwards, though Ingle has seemingly recovered after being in a bad place mentally and physically for a long time. Ingle is from the same part of the world as me and was much loved in Yorkshire, especially in Scarborough, much helped by the fact that he refused to relocate elsewhere and is a humble, likeable bloke who was quiet, no nonsense, clever and funny. Polar opposite of that wanker Naz. Ingle was a hero to me and I hated Hamed and was willing Paul to wipe the smirk off his bat eared swede in that fight, but it wasn't to be. Ingle vs Hodkinson would've been a war.
Great conditioning and a busy fighter who cut way too much weight. I was at his fight with Hamed, Naz just had too much. As others have said, his win over MacMillan was a really good performance.
Great post. I hope Paul is doing OK. I heard a few years back that he was living with his Mum, part paralysed and unsurprisingly, in a very dark place. I remember him exactly as you describe and sincerely wish him well.
He was living with his mam and claiming dole and weighed 20 odd stone with impaired speech and movement, and was badly depressed. I think a lot of the locals who'd treated him like a hero ended up not wanting to know him, which understandably made him angry and bitter. His mate Sonny Pollard who opened and now runs the successful Paul Ingle Academy in Hull helped him out massively to get himself back on his feet and he's lost a lot of weight (about 8 or 9 stone I think) and is in a much better way these days but doesn't appear in public much.
Thanks for you great posts. I hope that he’s doing okay. All fighters are warriors, and it’s terribly sad when things like that happen. I’ll never forget the build up to the Naz fight, when they showed Paul training. It’s something that’s stuck in the memory for years. Sky Sports did a little feature on him, which I’m sure you’ll have seen, where he dived off of the harbour wall into the sea. I always remember that. I’ll just never forget it.
