Clown ‘Prince’ of England Expects to Be Rave in U.S.

‘Prince” Naseem Hamed--England’s Populist pugilist, the mad mod--is coming to America to fight its champions, win over its people, and, not least, is bringing his long, loud rave party overseas.

The British boxing invasion is wrapped up in one manic, 5-foot-4 featherweight.

This is not your normal boxing import. Hamed’s fights are part Las Vegas revue, part dance-club frenzy and part working-class theater, from his

strobe-light-and-smoke entrances to his full front flip over the top ring rope to his strange, hands-low-punch-while-backpedaling style to his usually devastating knockout victories.

And on Dec. 19, when he finally moves the show to New York’s Madison Square Garden and HBO, probably against former featherweight champion Kevin Kelly, he figures to put on the wildest show yet.

That fight will start Hamed’s just-completed, long-anticipated, multifight, multimillion-dollar deal with HBO, which is scheduled to showcase him to the American public--his first 28 fights have been in England and Ireland--and match him with the top level of U.S. featherweights, including Kelly, Marco Antonio Barrera and Junior Jones.

“I know what Americans like,” Hamed, 23, said Thursday at a local hotel, where he was attending the World Boxing Organization’s convention.

“Americans love the flash--love the flash. They want a really, really confident fighter who lifts his head high, can shout his mouth off, like a miniature Ali. And they love winners, and I’m a pure winner.

“If you’re a winner in America, that’s what they want to see. Once they see me, they’ll love me. It might take a bit of time. But they’re going to love me. I’m the bomb.”

In his 28 professional fights, all victories, the last 16 by knockout, Hamed, the WBO featherweight champion who was born in England but whose parents are from Yemen, has not come close to losing.

Against Welsh fighter Steve Robinson in Wales two years ago, Hamed was the challenger, trying to take Robinson’s title. Hamed came out first, shimmied and sashayed into the ring, got hit with a tossed coin, danced in the ring to Robinson’s entrance music, then pummeled Robinson for eight rounds before knocking him out.

“There’s no other fighter in the world that’s basically got the confidence and the heart to dance all the way down to that ring, and get to the ring and do a front flip over the top rope for a nice entrance,” Hamed said in his first interview since finalizing the HBO deal. “And you’ve got to make sure you land good, boy, because you’re going to a fight. The last thing you want to do is twist your ankle.”

Has anyone ever exerted that much energy before the bell rings? Doesn’t Hamed fear getting exhausted before fists start flying?

“Little do they know, I’m already having a bigger rave in my training room about an hour before the fight with all my mates,” Hamed said. “Music on, we’re dancing, we’re laughing, there’s jokes.

“I’m going to bring all that to the States.”

Hamed just shakes his head when compared to boxing’s other famous showmen, Hector Camacho and Jorge Paez.

“A lot of people have been saying, when we go to watch you box, it’s like going to a concert,” Hamed said of his young following. “People say it’s like a pop-star feeling, like going to see an artist. And they’re watching a fight at the end of it.

“There are certain fighters who have a certain air about themselves and their entrances and the way they carry themselves. And when they get in, they lose. With me, it’s totally different. I’m a pure winner.”

He does it with what is probably the strangest style among boxing’s champions.

Hamed boxes like a matador at work, twisting his back at wild angles as opponents charge, then firing short punches that don’t look crushing but have resulted in 26 knockouts, the most impressive an eighth-round KO of then-International Boxing Federation champion Tom “Boom Boom” Johnson in London earlier this year.

“I spoke to Felix Trinidad and he can’t speak English, but I could tell he was asking me, ‘How do you knock people out basically walking backward?’ ” Hamed said.

“A lot of people want to find out how I can knock somebody out in retreat. It’s simple. That’s my style. All the commentators are saying I’m breaking all the rules of boxing, all that rubbish. They’re making it out that I don’t basically know what I’m doing. And I’m doing these moves day in and day out in the gym.”

Though Hamed had been wooed by HBO for years, the deal finally was triggered by Don King’s attempt to muscle Hamed into fighting one of his fighters, Hector Lizzaraga, in an IBF title defense.

Through his own promoter, Frank Warren, Hamed had fought under King’s banner, and for Showtime, but never in America, and never on a major card. Last summer, Hamed signaled his break from King when he allowed the IBF to strip him of his title, rather than fight King’s man.

“Don King, I respect him,” said Warren, who has been King’s English partner for years. “He’s in the Mike Tyson business. But we’re in the Naseem Hamed business. That’s our priority. So we’re going our own way, doing our own thing.

“I couldn’t get Naz on Showtime. It just wasn’t happening. The money was spent elsewhere. We tried to get him on the [June 28 Evander Holyfield-] Tyson bill, and I was very disappointed we couldn’t do it. That’s disappointing. Then, I see Christy Martin on the show.”

When Warren took over Hamed’s promotions, he says he instantly saw an athlete with broad-based appeal, with an attitude that could sell tickets.

“I looked at him and I said, ‘We’ve got to market him for kids,’ ” Warren said. “And we got all the kids’ magazines, photo shoots and we just kept hitting them, hitting them. . . . It’s like an attitude, a street credibility thing, and he’s got it.

“And most importantly, he’s got the ability and the style to make it work. He’s one of the guys who’s going to take boxing into the next century.

“Holyfield’s a tremendous boxer but he’s not getting any younger. [Oscar] De La Hoya’s there. But there’s not a lot of them around. I don’t think there’s been many boxing legends out of Europe. But he has the opportunity to do it.”

For HBO, Hamed is a unique opportunity to get a foothold on the burgeoning international boxing market.

According to one knowledgeable source, King has outbid Time Warner, HBO’s parent company, despite Time Warner’s coffers, for several fights--one of them the heavyweight bout between Holyfield and Michael Moorer on Nov. 8--mostly because he has tapped the international television markets so often during his run with Tyson.

“The wonderful thing about Hamed is, he demands you react to him,” said Lou DiBella, senior vice president for Time Warner sports. “Some people are going to think he’s too brash and he’s too cocky and they may have problems with him. And an awful lot of people are going to love him. Either way, they’re going to want to see him, and that’s what has been compelling about this kid globally.

“If you haven’t seen this kid, you haven’t seen anything like him.”

QUICK JABS

Former boxing manager Rock Newman, never shy about raising a ruckus in that sport, says he sees the irony of his recent struggle to be allowed to purchase majority control of a minor league baseball team affiliated with the Cincinnati Reds.

“I tried every diplomatic and quiet way I could to solve this,” he said. “I didn’t get into baseball to fight, man. But what can I do? It’s obvious what happened here.”

Newman charges that Reds’ owner Marge Schott called off the deal, which involved buying a team and moving it to Dayton, Ohio, once she learned it would become the first major or minor league team owned by an African American.

“The phone calls stopped long before they heard my name,” Newman said, denying that the refusal was about his controversial boxing past. “Plus, I have never done anything in my life that would disqualify me from owning a team, and we know we have convicted felons and people like Marge Schott in the league.”

Newman also reports that Riddick Bowe stopped by his house this week to show off a recent weight loss, with the prospect of leaving retirement to fight Lennox Lewis up in the air.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, but Bowe has always known that he could beat Lennox.”

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The incorrect decision given to World Boxing Assn. welterweight champion Ike Quartey over Jose Luis Lopez will not affect Quartey’s short-term future and does not mean Lopez will get an immediate rematch, according to a spokesman for Main Events, Quartey’s promoter. Quartey, knocked down in the 11th round, was announced as the winner at the Foxwoods Resort last Friday, but it was quickly noticed there was an inconsistency on the scoring sheets.

A week later, the fight was announced as a draw, dropping Quartey to 34-0-1. Because Quartey retains his title, Main Events is going ahead with its planned bout between Quartey and Pernell Whitaker, who won a close decision on the same card and now may be much more likely to want to face a beatable Quartey.

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IBF 130-pound champion Arturo Gatti is walking around at 160 pounds in the wake of his knockout of Gabriel Ruelas earlier this month, and is mulling a move up to lightweight (135 pounds) to fight Azumah Nelson or even junior-welterweight (140) to fight Gabriel’s brother, Rafael Ruelas.

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Roy Jones Jr.’s handlers are not gung-ho on his fighting Michael Nunn, even though America Presents, promoter for Nunn, the IBF’s No. 1 contender for Jones’ light-heavyweight title, recently won the purse bid for the bout. America Presents has no pay-per-view deal for a planned Jan. 17 date, and Jones, scheduled to make $1.8 million for the proposed bout, will not lift a finger to assist the company.

“Roy’s not going to accommodate a fringe promoter like America Presents,” said Jones’ spokesman, Greg Fritz.

CALENDAR

Thursday--Carlos Navarro vs. Carlos Valdez, super-bantamweights; Nick Martinez vs. Augustine Renteria, middleweights; Irvine Marriott, 7:30 p.m.