Clint Neale

Prince Naseem Hamed says his trainer Brendan Ingle, the man Pierce Brosnan plays in the film Giant, held him to a deal made when he was 11: £10 million once he had made £40 million. That is exactly the 25% Ingle took from his fighters' purses. They split in 1998, when Naseem was 24, and never made up before Ingle died in 2018. In the video below, on talkSPORT as the film came out in January, Naseem says Ingle was "so money orientated, money motivated." Then the line he has carried since childhood: "You did a deal with me at 11 years old that you give me 10 million once you make 40 million." He adds that Ingle was "the highest paid trainer in the world." Ingle told his side on camera years earlier, at 60, and it is the second half of the video. "I'm on 25% of whatever they get." When a fighter earns £400 and he takes £100, he says, nobody minds. "Then when I start getting them 40 grand," the mates start asking, "what are you giving him 10 grand for?" He found Naseem at 7 in his gym in Wincobank, Sheffield, and walked him round the streets every Sunday night for 2 hours or more, talking about how he would become world champion. By the late 1990s Naseem was headlining Madison Square Garden, and the same quarter still came off every purse. Ingle's camp says it was never greed. His sons advised on Giant, and Johnny Nelson, one of his world champions, says the old man had a van, wore no jewellery and never lived like a rich man. Naseem's only defeat came in 2001 against Marco Antonio Barrera, 3 years after he left the gym. I think Ingle's own numbers explain the whole thing. 40 and 10 in his story, 40 and 10 in Naseem's, only the zeros changed. If anyone takes a percentage of what you earn, write down a ceiling or a review date while the sums are small, because that is the only time both sides find it easy to agree. Pierce Brosnan's Ingle gets the last scene of the film, and Naseem says he only wishes it had been true. Was a quarter of a world champion's purses a fair price for 18 years of Sunday walks, or too much to hold a boy to for something he agreed at 11? I post one story like this every day: a famous name, the money they made, and who ended up with it.