Naz rules out retirement talk

In the build-up to his 1997 New York win over Kevin Kelley, Naseem Hamed chose Chumbawumba’s Tubthumping as his big-fight anthem and belted out the words: “I get knocked down, but I get up again, you’re never going to keep me down.”

That’s exactly what he did at Madison Square Garden that December and now the Prince must once again live up to his proud boast if he is to silence the doubters who say he is finished as a top-flight boxer.

The 29-year-old has been out of action for 12 months since a lacklustre points win over Manuel Calvo in London last May.

Before that he had taken just over another year out to recover from his first professional loss to Marco Antonio Barrera in Las Vegas.

With a proposed comeback against Manchester’s Michael Brodie being repeatedly put on hold, Hamed’s former promoter Frank Warren expressed his belief that the Prince was ready to hang up his gloves.

However, Hamed insists that we have not seen the last of his leopard-print shorts and elaborate ring entrances.

He told www.boxing-central.com: “I’d like to thank Frank for his concern. I’m doing fine and looking forward to boxing later this year, insha Allah (God willing).”

Hamed can boast 17 successful world title fights among his 36 wins, but Warren feels the big-punching Yorkshireman has never quite fulfilled his enormous potential.

He said: “I don’t think he’ll fight again. I don’t think his heart’s in it. He’s comfortable, he’s made a lot of money, he spends a lot of time with his family and he doesn’t need to fight.

“If he does fight again now he’ll be under a lot of scrutiny and a lot of people will be asking if he’s still got it – he didn’t look like he still had it in his last fight.

“I think at one stage he was the most exciting fighter that I’d ever been involved with and I do believe at one stage, in the early part of his career, he could have gone on to become one of the great fighters.

“But that disappeared when he didn’t fight as regularly as he should have done, when he was cutting corners on his training. It just didn’t work out for him from that point on.”

Maybe there is still time for Hamed to prove Warren wrong on both counts.