Boxing: Warren right to scorn Hamed's comeback

Frank Warren is entirely right to cast scorn on Naseem Hamed's comeback. In his Sunday newspaper column Britain's leading promoter wrote under the headline, "The Ham act is a joke", that Hamed's fight for the meaningless International Boxing Organisation featherweight title against Manuel Calvo on Saturday "is perfect. Calvo is a non-puncher who will make him look good."

Reality visited Hamed in Las Vegas a year ago after he was beaten by the Mexican Marco Antonio Barrera.

Kerry Davis, an executive of Home Box Office which had poured millions of dollars into making Hamed an authentic draw in America, said his company had only one lingering interest in a fighter so ridiculously hyped down the years. It was to see him redeem himself against Barrera.

Hamed declined the offer, and, for any serious observers of the fight game wrote the concluding statement of a career which had always promised more than it had delivered.

So Warren's position is sound. However, it does cause a slight ripple of mirth in someone who was jeered out of a London television studio for making roughly the same point as the promoter, who was also on the panel and in rather sharp disagreement then. But one wouldn't want to be sniffy about something that happened six years ago, when, after all Warren was still Hamed's promoter.