The Night the Hype Died: The Fall of Prince Naseem Hamed

22 Years Ago Yesterday, Marco Antonio Barrera ended the myth of the Prince

When I was in my early 20’s, Prince Naseem Hamed was that dude. Along with Roy Jones and a handful of others, he was among the first fighters of the hip hop generation, a rakish, reckless, unconventional southpaw puncher from Sheffield, England with a swagger and style all his own.

Even before he made his American television debut, whispers were spreading from across the pond. A VHS tape was passed around on the trading circuit, grainy videos of this skinny Yemeni kid blasting fools, flipping into and around the ring while doing his best Jones’ impression inside it once the bell rang. He took Roy’s unorthodoxy to new, absurd levels. Hamed was never on the right foot, never once approached a textbook stance, did almost everything technically wrong all the time.

And, yet, the bodies hit the floor.

One of nine kids at home, easily lost among the tumult, he was happy when the spotlight shined on him and him alone. Standing just 5’3”, he nevertheless cast a large shadow. In 1997 HBO took note and signed him to a six-fight deal, guaranteeing at least $2 million each time he strapped on the gloves. The executives, questioned by some at the time for hanging a 50 by 20 billboard in Times Square to advertise a fighter with so little elite experience, looked like geniuses after his first bout, a barn-burner that showed the Prince at his absolute best and worst.

The night began with Hamed’s hilariously trolling his opponent Kevin Kelley, left to stew in the ring while the Prince took his sweet time with an entrance that included four minutes of dancing behind a curtain, his silhouette the only thing proclaiming his presence to the world. It only got worse when the bell rang, for Kelley at least, culminating with a multiple knockdown shootout in the fourth round that left even skeptics silent.

Hamed stands over a fallen Kelley

“What we just saw,” announcer Larry Merchant, rarely at a loss for words, said, “was the Hagler-Hearns of featherweight fighting.”

Hamed shuffled around the ring with his hands down by his sides, counting on hyper-natural speed to both save his bacon on occasion as well as propel his fists into someone’s fast with shocking force, rattling brains and captivating fans.

Still, no one knew quite what to make of Hamed, somehow a disciple of both Muhammad Ali and Michael Jackson. People under 25 seemed to love him and he became a pop culture phenomenon in Britain, every bit as famous as Oasis and Victoria Beckham. Those who didn’t, who derisively called him a ‘Spice Boy’, still couldn’t stop watching, hoping beyond hope to see him lose.

His flamboyant confidence could be off-putting, especially to people who didn’t consider it well earned based on his accomplishments in the ring. When Sports Illustrated called him a “preening narcissist with an impregnable ego” with “a ragged, sometimes buffoonish fighting style” many nodded along in silent agreement.

But the Prince had a different way of putting it—“poetry in motion.”

He would eventually sign a new deal that could deliver up to $48 million over six fights, the most most lucrative ever for a fighter weighing under 130 pounds. That kind of money came with equally lofty expectations, as did a letter from Buckingham Palace inviting him to become a Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. But what followed the Kelley destruction was not quite as compelling as that one-in-a-lifetime debut—less impressive outings against opponents with less impressive names like Sanchez and Soto.

Left on the outside looking in were potential foes like Juan Manuel Marquez, who turned down a lowball offer that made some believe Hamed was content to duck anyone who might actually do him harm. Sniping from HBO’s broadcast sharp shooters was getting dangerous. They called some of his fights with a barely hidden sneer. Too many more pattycakes and it would turn deadly. Seth Abraham, HBO’s head honcho, said as much to the San Francisco Examiner:

“I’ve told Naseem’s brother and promoter Riath ‘Your brother is a good fighter and you don’t have to protect him. At the moment you’re driving a Rolls Royce at 40 mph.’”

It was time, in other words, for Hamed to put up or shut up. And, since shutting up didn’t seem to be in the cards for the voluble star, a fight was booked with an opponent with gravitas, hand selected by trainer Emanuel Steward and thought to be the kind of hard-charging brawler who would walk right into a power punch.

Like Hamed, his opponent Marco Antonio Barrera had been the hot new thing in a sport that eats its young. Once called the heir to Chavez, two losses to Junior Jones tarnished his star. Although the two men were both just 27-years-old, Barrera had lived a full life in the ring already, competing more than 50 times, often in life-changing bouts like his furious battle with Erik Morales the year before.

“I felt humbled by watching this,” Merchant said. “Almost like they were giving too much of themselves.”

Despite his incredible fight with Morales, or perhaps because of it, Barrera was the betting underdog and both Roy Jones and 28 of 30 sports writers agreed with the public.

“The Prince is on his way up,” Jones said pre-fight, perhaps seeing himself in the featherweight star. “Barrera is maybe on his way down.”

In his training camp, sycophants only showed Hamed tapes of Barrera’s least impressive moments, building an unhealthy level of confidence. Comfortably ensconced in a Palm Springs mansion that once belonged to Bing Crosby, the Prince spent more time trying to work off the slight belly pooch he’d built between fights than he did sparring.

“He had so much talent that, in preparation for the Barrera fight, he took Barrera lightly,” Steward said in a 2011 interview. “If he had approached Barrera with focus and intensity he would have beaten Barrera. His punching power, his elusiveness, his instincts were just too much. It was just the case of someone not being prepared for a fight.”

Hamed was living large.

Barrera, meanwhile, was in the mountains of Big Bear, snow still on the ground in March as he worked out in a public gym. This was Rocky III only real life. Barrera’s stark conditions and regimen were in marked contrast to Hamed at the height of his diva games, flying to Vegas in a Lear jet and sending to Mexico for a special pair of goatskin boxing gloves, only to insist the day before the fight he didn’t want to wear them after all, insisting instead that his contract allowed him to take the gloves Barrera brought instead.

It was one of several manufactured dramas before the bout. Hamed seemed comically, it turns out dangerously, unconcerned about the actual business at hand. In between holding meetings about how his private chef would be serving meals and flying in a Los Angeles-based barber, Hamed’s team spent copious time preparing one of his trademark elaborate entrances.

“It means more to me than the fight,” documentary cameras caught the Prince telling Michael Buffer behind the scenes. Ultimately, it went just about as well. Flying to the ring on a disc-shaped trapeze swing, Hamed was soaked by a perfectly placed beer thrown by a gifted member of the audience with a stellar arm.

Covered in suds and forced to wear off-the-shelf gloves after the Nevada commission settled glove-gate by making both men wear plain red ones, Hamed hesitated when it came time to make his trademark flip into the ring. He came in between the ropes like a mere mortal instead.

In this business, we call that foreshadowing.

The fight that followed was neither as compelling nor as one-sided as we’ve come to remember it in our imaginations. Barrera was clinical but cautious, tagging Hamed when he’d flop off-balance into range, content to mostly do nothing when he didn’t.

“My people prepared me well,” Barrera said after the fight. “I didn’t want to charge him and get careless.”

At one point, after a brief grappling exhibition, both Nevada official Marc Ratner and a uniformed police officer hopped on the ring apron to restore order. Later, Barrera would ram Hamed’s head into the turnbuckle after another scuffle.

Slowly, when the wrestling turned to boxing, the Mexican took charge.

After staggering Hamed in the first round, Barrera wobbled him again in the fourth and ninth rounds. For all his talk about “devastating” his foe, Hamed never managed to land a single significant left hand. Barrera kept his hands high, circled left so much he nearly wore a track in the mat, occasionally using his height and reach advantage to pop out an accurate jab and quick left hooks to the body and head. Hamed, despite copious openings, never delivered in kind.

It was easy for even experienced fighters to get sucked into Hamed’s game, enraged by his taunts or simply unable to avoid the temptation he presented by persistently keeping his hands down head up. Barrera never lost focus or discipline, fighting a professional’s fight. He was happy to put his effort and training up against something as ephemeral as “talent” and came out the other side with his hand raised.

Before the bout, Hamed had put all his faith in his Lord, saying Allah would decide the victor. As the clock ticked down in the final round, announcer Jim Lampley couldn’t help razz the cocky Englishman, crowing “Allah knows how to spell Barrera. B-A-R-R-E-R-A.”

When the decisions were read, the division had a new star. One of the beautiful things about boxing is the way fighters can rewrite the established narrative with nothing more than two fists and a will to win. April 7, 2001 was supposed to be the crowning of Prince Naseem Hamed as among the sport’s pound-for-pound kings. Barrera? He was just a bit player, another anecdote in a great man’s story. Until he chose otherwise. Until he decided the story was actually about him.

Before the bout it was assumed Barrera was near the end. Instead he fought another decade, winning two rematches with Morales that etched his name in history. He also challenged himself against Marquez and Manny Pacquiao, two names that appear nowhere on Hamed’s resume.

Instead, it was the seemingly ascendant Prince who had fought his last major bout. After one more lackluster fight against Manuel Calvo a year later, Hamed stepped away for good. Some believed Barrera had stolen his heart and fighting spirit. Others assumed he had made enough money to escape the perilous grind that eventually wears every boxer down.

The actual answer, according to the Prince himself, was simple and to the point.

“I had hand trouble and could not take the power of my punch," Hamed told BBC Radio in 2009. "I needed cortisone injections to take away the pain when I fought, then after every fight the gloves would be whipped off and my hands would be as big as balloons.

"It was getting ridiculous and you can't go on with no ammunition. I was one of the hardest punchers ever known but if the hands are quite brittle and you do damage, then it's hard to carry on.”

Many fights end with the fighters on divergent paths. That was true here as well—for a time. Ultimately, both ended in Canastota, New York where both men are enshrined in the International Boxing Hall of Fame. While the years and subsequent controversy have faded Hamed’s star, there was a time few shined brighter. Now he will be remembered for as long as men batter each other for pride or pay. Barrera, too, earned his place among the elites, in no small part due to the higher profile he walked out of this bout with.

Does that count as a happy ending? In the sport of boxing, it doesn’t get much better.