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-- The Prince and the Flash A Prince or a Frog? The Flushing Flash Two Open Mouths Making an Entrance Six Times on the Ground After the Peak The Prince and the Flash SCROLL DOWN The Prince and the Flash BY ERIC RASKIN Twenty years ago, on December 19, 1997, an undefeated, power-punching British featherweight of Yemeni descent named “Prince” Naseem Hamed brought his show to America for the first time when he faced his toughest professional test, New Yorker Kevin Kelley, a.k.a. “The Flushing Flash,” at Madison Square Garden. The hype was off the charts. And the fight exceeded all hype. In four frantic, furiously paced rounds, six knockdowns were scored — three by each fighter — before Hamed triumphed. Along the way, The Prince’s flaws were exposed, but his heart and his power were proven and the man who was in the process of shattering the featherweight pay scale had shown he was worth every penny. Listen to the audio version of this oral history on the HBO Boxing Podcast: Jim Lampley (HBO host and blow-by-blow announcer) : It was all energy. All excitement. It was just pure fun. Everything about it was magical, and it became as spectacular a give and take as we’ve ever had. George Azar (journalist and Naseem Hamed press liaison) : It remains one of the most entertaining fights I’ve ever seen, just in terms of spectacle and excitement. Kevin Kelley : The purses you see today, in the featherweight division and lightweight division, started with me and him. Lou DiBella (HBO Sports Senior Vice President) : I love Kevin Kelley, he’s my friend to this day, but the right guy won. Because that ushered in a new generation. There was a Hamed era in boxing. It wasn’t that long. But man was it intense while it was going on. Gareth Davies ( The Daily Telegraph ) : Naz Hamed was brilliant, he was brash, he was braggadocious, and he was one of the best of the British we’ve ever seen. A Prince or a Frog? A Prince or a Frog? Moments before the bell rang to begin the Hamed-Kelley fight, HBO’s Larry Merchant asked, “Inquiring minds want to know: Is Hamed a prince or a frog?” In the months leading up to that moment, many American sports fans were asking, simply, “Who is this Prince Naseem Hamed guy I keep seeing and hearing about?” Naz, as he was known to friends, was, first of all, not actually a prince. But he was, at just 23 years of age, well on his way to becoming the king of the featherweight division, having claimed two of the four major belts while compiling a record of 28-0 with 26 KOs. In the fall of 1997, Hamed sat down for a pair of exclusive interviews with HBO that, save for a few brief clips, have never been released to the public before. Here’s Hamed, from one of those interviews, talking about his beginnings in boxing at age seven: Naseem Hamed : I lived just up the road from a boxing club, a gym, and when I walked in I realized it was the sport for me. I knew instantly, soon as I walked in and soon as I felt the vibe in there and seen the movement ’cause I liked the movement of boxing, the movement on their feet, the skill. As soon as I saw the art of it was hitting and not getting hit, I knew had a knack for that. So at the age of 11, I started boxing as an amateur and I boxed to the age of 18. But in the middle of that, I was winning national titles every year. So at 16, 17, all the way up from the age of 11, I was winning British titles. So I realized that it was going to be my career. I realized from an early age that I was going to turn professional and that was what I was going to do for a living. Hamed turned pro in 1992 and won his first 11 fights, 10 by knockout, before claiming the European bantamweight title in just his 12th bout. A little over a year later, on September 30, 1995, at age 21, he dominated and knocked out Steve Robinson in Cardiff, Wales to claim his first world title. Gareth A. Davies, then and now a boxing writer for The Daily Telegraph, reflects on how the power puncher from Sheffield, England, was perceived in Britain in the mid ’90s: Davies : There was a lot of heat around him, a lot of excitement around who this kid was. He was flashy. He was arrogant. He called his hands “K” and “O.” “I’m gonna get you with K, I’m gonna get you with O.” He was of Yemeni descent, he had five or six brothers in tow, they were part of his entourage. He made a lot of noise wherever he was. He was with Brendan Ingle, who was maybe the Angelo Dundee of this partnership. Brendan was brilliant with the media, this brilliant Irishman who’d moved to Sheffield, who was great at talking to the media. And he was The Prince. He was this Yemeni Prince. This self-appointed, self-anointed boxing royalty from the Middle East, if you like. And he played on that. And I think it was fascinating that he was a Muslim. Even in the early days, he would say that it was God’s will that he would win. He would use that expression “inshallah.” These were before the times when anyone really had any of those sideways thoughts about Islam, remember. He was a very strong Islamic figure for British culture, and it was a beautiful melding. Not everyone liked him, because he had that arrogance. But he wasn’t tumbleweed. You either loved Naz or you hated him. And you know what? He delivered. Those massive legs, he wasn’t a big man but he had massive, powerful legs, it allowed him to rotate and get all the power into his shots. He was natural, he was fluid, he was like an anaconda; he was a snake, he would wrap himself around you and he’d destroy you. Over the next couple of years, as Hamed’s unique breed of cocky showmanship kept attracting attention, word of The Prince’s exploits spread to the States. George Azar, a Lebanese-American journalist who was working for The Philadelphia Inquirer, heard about this undefeated boxing champion of Arab origin and decided to tune in to his June 8, 1996 fight in Newcastle, England against Puerto Rico’s Daniel Alicea, in which Hamed got knocked down in the first round. Azar : The bell rang ending the round, and I thought, This guy is absolutely like the worst fighter I’ve ever seen! I’ve never seen anybody so bad. And then the bell rang for round two, and he came tearing out of the corner and beat Alicea from pillar to post, knocked him out with one shot. I thought, Oh my god, this is somebody I’ve got to see! So I got interested in him, and I wrote him a letter, and they said, “Why don’t you come over and meet Naz?” So I flew to Sheffield. And he picked me up in his Lamborghini and we went to his house and we spent the day and we went to the gym and this and that. And I came back to the hotel room, there was a message waiting for me from the BBC, their local affiliate in Sheffield. And the lady got on the phone, she said, “Is this George Azar? You’re an American reporter, I understand that you were at Prince Naseem’s gym today and that you went to his house.” And I said, “Yeah, yeah, that’s right.” And she said, “Well, can you come into the radio station and speak to us?” I said, “Why?” And she said, “Well, he’s never allowed anyone into his house before.” And I realized that this guy was really sort of a celebrity on a level that I wasn’t aware of. Reflecting in his 1997 interview with HBO, Hamed had his own thoughts on his two-round adventure with Daniel Alicea that Azar witnessed, as well as on his to-that-point career-defining fight with Tom Johnson, in which he ended the four-year reign of the American beltholder. Hamed : I think the sign of a champion, and the sign of a good fighter, is if he does get hit, how he absorbs the shot, and if he does go down, how he gets back up and how he carries on. And what he does in the round after to get back at the guy and bring the fight back in his favor. I got knocked down once properly, against an undefeated Puerto Rican called Daniel Alicea, which was a great, great fighter, in the first round. And I had predicted six weeks before the fight that I was going to take him out in two rounds. ...