By Don Caputo

You always wondered what would happen if It got fed up with bailing him out…that was, until you found out. Surely, you thought, It's loyalty to him will evaporate as swiftly as a shallow stream under the beating sun once it realizes the extent to which its generosity is being abused. Even the most faithful of servants have their limits, limits that if you bend far enough and often enough, will eventually break and fall away for good.

In his mind, the question was not even a question – at least not one worthy of anything resembling serious consideration or concern. How could he possibly keep his inflated ego underpinned whilst permitting even a crumb of such a thought to fester in his head? He couldn’t, he wouldn’t, he didn’t. It was far easier to carry on with the nonchalant assumption that It would always be there for him, since the alternative was too terrible, too disastrous, too goddamn unlikely to even contemplate.

The man they called ‘Prince’ was in yet another jam, this time in the biggest fight of his life. You squint at your TV screen to get a better look at his face: is that really him? The face is most definitely his – that mischievous grin and those elf like ears give him away every time – but you don’t recognize the fighter. It’s not the Naseem Hamed you grew up watching; the Naseem Hamed who thrilled you with his stunning accuracy, the Naseem Hamed who dumbfounded you with his defensive genius, the Naseem Hamed who, for a brief time, made you think greatness was unfolding before your very eyes.

Back then, he never had to rely on It to better his opponents. That’s not to say It hasn’t always been with him, because it has. The two, after all, came into this world together. Against foes such as Steve Robinson and Tom ‘Boom Boom’ Johnson however, the role It played was drastically different.

Rather than riding in on it's horse to save the day, It instead stood patiently in the wings, admiring what was on display, waiting…waiting…then showing up when called upon, as if from nowhere, to put an exclamation mark on a skilful, disciplined, and frequently virtuoso performance.

That Naseem Hamed is now gone, your eyes scour the ring desperately but he’s nowhere to be seen. It then occurs to you that he’s actually been gone for a few years, you’d just forgotten. Or, perhaps more accurately, chosen to forget. For you see, the wasting of a talent as rare as his is a hard thing for you to gaze upon, but averting your eyes is even more difficult. He’s been behind on the scorecards in the past, been beaten up, knocked down, all but lost fights before eventually summoning It : his power, a punch, the punch.

Sometimes it only took one to render his opponents unconscious, a crumpled heap on the canvas. He thought the destructiveness he possessed was unparalleled, he thought he could leave them all at his feet, he also thought he could stop training. Right, right, wrong! Simply put, he fell in love with his power and became lazy.

His skills, reflexes and agility now eroded, he’s in over his head against a different breed of animal. A fighter who trains in the mountains, prepares his body and mind with utter diligence and dedication, someone who is prepared to kill and prepared to die if need be.

Marco Antonio Barrera, ‘The Baby Faced Assassin,’ entered the ring with the kind of ravenous hunger that Hamed had long ago lost. You can see it in his eyes, you can see it in his demeanor, you can see it in the way he fights.

Hamed asks, then he summons, then finally he begs, but to no avail. His power, a punch, the punch wouldn’t come, he had gotten himself into trouble one too many times.

The scorecards are read, and it breaks your heart. He didn't need It to win, you think to yourself, for you can still remember a time when there was more to him than just the power that cruelly deserted him that night…so much more.