Naseem Hamed has said that if he could see his former trainer Brendan Ingle again, he would have apologized.
Ingle died in 2018, three years after his star student in his Sheffield gym was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.
Their complicated rift is the central part of the new film, Giant, and while Hamed wasn’t involved in the making of the film, he has been promoting it this week.
He and Ingle – played by Pierce Brosnan in the movie – never mended the fences that broke down over finances.
“If I had that time with him that I wanted before that whole thing just stretched on year after year that I tried reaching out, if he would have sat with me, I would have just said, ‘Listen, we're older now and there's gonna be no time left soon and for everything that I ever could have done to upset you, I apologize and forgive me because things happen and for everything that you did against me to make me feel the way you did…’ Hamed told BoxingScene.
“It's unbelievable that you could have a trainer say to you when you're 11 and 12 how much money he's gonna take of yours and to try and brainwash you from a very, very young age and plant that seed.”
That part is covered in the film, with the pair dreaming big about how big they can make it with Naz as the fighter and Ingle as the guru behind him.
Discussing finances with a minor still rankles with Hamed.
There are plenty who contend Hamed should have stayed loyal to the Sheffield-residing Irishman, but they parted ways and he was later trained by Oscar Suarez and Emanuel Steward.
“What's the intention of that?” Naz asked of the talks he had with Ingle about money when he was small. “What’s the true intention? But regardless of that, I would have just wanted him to know that I have nothing in my heart about him that’s bad, nothing in my heart for him and his sons. If people thought that I was gonna turn up and just tear this movie apart and say everything bad about him, they’re wrong.”
