Naseem Hamed

Naseem "Naz" Hamed, nicknamed Prince Naseem, was born in Sheffield on 12 February 1974 to a Yemeni father and a Yemeni mother, and competed as a professional boxer from 1992 to 2002.¹² He held the WBO, IBF and WBC featherweight titles between 1995 and 2000, reigned as lineal champion from 1998 to 2001, and finished his career with a record of 36 wins (31 by knockout) and one loss.¹ In 2015 he was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame, and in 2019 The Ring retroactively awarded him its featherweight title in honour of his dominance of the division.²

Hamed was born in Sheffield, Yorkshire, trained under the Irish trainer Brendan Ingle, and showed his talent from an early age.² He made his professional debut at flyweight at eighteen in 1992, and in 1994 won the European bantamweight title and the WBC International super-bantamweight title.² In 1995 he won the WBO featherweight title by stopping Steve Robinson in the eighth round, added the IBF title against Tom Johnson in 1997 and the WBC title against César Soto in 1999.² In 2001 he lost his undefeated record to Mexico's Marco Antonio Barrera, and returned a year later for his final bout, beating the European champion Manuel Calvo to take the IBO featherweight title.² He was famous for an unorthodox style, theatrical ring entrances — sometimes on a flying carpet or a raised platform — a signature front somersault over the ropes, and a knockout rate of 84 percent of his wins.² The Guardian's Sean Ingle wrote that at his peak Hamed was a global star in every sense, and he is credited with inspiring many British Asians to take up boxing.² In 2016 ESPN ranked him twenty-second among the best 25 boxers of the previous 25 years.²

This section sets out different positions as reported in the sources. It is not a verdict by the museum. The English article states that Hamed is a Muslim and frequently recited the takbir out loud before his fights, and quotes Sean Ingle calling him "a proud Muslim" who appealed to large parts of working-class Britain; his last fight was watched by 11 million people on ITV.¹ The Arabic article makes no statement of his religion anywhere in its text.² Wikidata gives his religion as Islam, generically, naming no school.³ Because public practice and identity are not an attestation of a school, his school is recorded in the museum's data as unknown.¹³ Away from the ring, Hamed was convicted in 2006 of dangerous driving after a 2005 collision in which another driver was seriously injured; he served 16 weeks of a 15-month sentence and was stripped of his MBE.¹

• Naseem Hamed — English Wikipedia¹
• Naseem Hamed — Arabic Wikipedia²
• Naseem Hamed — Wikidata Q1355898³