The first time I watched Prince Naseem Hamed train, my jaw couldn’t have dropped any faster if he had hit me with one of his lassoing uppercuts. I had followed all his fights on TV, of course. But to see him in the flesh in September 1994, a year before he became world champion, was an altogether more visceral and mesmeric experience.

Hamed’s punches sounded like firecrackers welcoming in the new year as they smashed into the pads. He was almost impossible to hit. And, most staggering of all, despite standing 5ft 4in tall and weighing only nine stone, he would bully far bigger men in sparring – including fighters such as John Keeton, who went on to become the British cruiserweight champion – until my great uncle, Brendan Ingle, called time.

“Naz can box orthodox and he can box southpaw,” Brendan would tell me, and anyone else who visited the St Thomas’ boys and girls club in Sheffield. “He can switch hit. He is going to win world titles at every weight from featherweight to super-middleweight. The only person that will beat him is himself.”

Naturally, there was a touch of the blarney about this. But only a touch. The more I watched Hamed – and I would go to the gym every couple of weeks as a student – the more I became convinced he would win titles in multiple weight divisions.

But even then there were tensions, which are explored in an enjoyable new biopic, Giant, starring Pierce Brosnan and Amir El-Masry. The film charts Hamed’s rise from the age of seven under my great uncle’s guidance, before the collapse of their relationship. And it also asks the pertinent question: how much is talent God-given, and how much is shaped?

So what was it like watching James Bond play a family member? In truth, a little surreal and sometimes downright spooky. Brosnan’s Ingle was a little more pushy, and unkempt, than I remember. But his tone and twang, Dublin tinged with Sheffield, and his mannerisms were uncanny.

As the film also shows, Brendan wasn’t only a trainer: he was a social worker, community glue, patriarch and philosopher rolled into one. “What’s the biggest motivator in life?” he once asked me. “Money?” I replied. “No, sex.” And then there would come a story, of a boxer distracted by a woman. A fight lost. An opportunity squandered.

Brendan also loved to tell people that “boxing at its worst is a dirty, rotten, horrible, prostitutioning, vindicative game … but it’s only like life. And life isn’t fair.” But he knew better than anyone that it transformed the lives of many kids, especially those who had been in trouble.

Brendan used to say he had seen it all before. And he pretty much had. But Hamed’s behaviour and ego eventually became too much. The film ends with the pair splitting after Hamed’s wild victory over Kevin Kelley at Madison Square Garden in 1997. In fact, their relationship staggered on until the Wayne McCullough fight the following year.

However since the film’s release on Friday, old wounds have been reopened. Hamed has spoken about how Brendan rebuffed his attempts to build bridges and also suggested that Brendan was obsessed with money.

Hamed is completely right on the first point – and totally wrong on the second. Was Brendan worried that Hamed’s brother, Riath, was turning Naseem’s head when it came to Brendan getting less of a cut of fight purses? Yes. In fact he called Riath a snake and didn’t want him in the gym. Did he feel that he deserved to be fairly rewarded for the years he had put into training Hamed? Absolutely.

But as my cousin, Dominic Ingle, reminded me, Brendan never moved away from his modest house in Wincobank. And while he bought an iron gate for his home once he had made some money, that was about it.

Meanwhile another fighter, Johnny Nelson, responded to Hamed’s comments by telling the story of how Brendan secretly gave him £250 a week for 13 months when he wasn’t earning. The one proviso? Nelson wasn’t allowed to tell anyone – and if he did, he would have to pay the money back.

What Brendan really craved most of all wasn’t money. It was respect. Respect from Hamed. Respect for his unique training methods. Respect for being an uneducated Paddy who had had it the hard way.

And while Hamed’s reputation has tumbled since retirement, his career deserves more respect. His solitary loss to Marco Antonio Barrera in 2001 has become a one-fight referendum on his talents. But by then he was long past his best. He didn’t train hard enough and overly relied on his power. And rewatching the documentary, The Little Prince, The Big Fight, his ego was rampant. The Hamed of 1995 would have thumped the Hamed of 2001. And, I believe, Barrera too.

Incidentally, while the film shows Ingles cheering when Hamed lost, that wasn’t the case. They didn’t watch the fight. However Dominic tells me that when the pair split, his dad actually cried.

Before walking away, he says that Brendan told Hamed that he would train more world champions in the future, only for Naz to scoff. “Like who?”

“Johnny Nelson and Junior Witter,” came the response.

“Johnny Nelson?” replied Hamed. “He’s already been beaten twice. And Junior Witter is never going to be world champion – you’re off your head.”

According to Dominic, the look in his dad’s eye suggested he knew that Hamed might be right. “My dad was in tears actually,” he says. “And Naz was going: ‘Look, he’s upset, you need to comfort him.’

But me and my brother, John, were like: “No, you comfort him, Naz. Because you upset him, not us.”

History ended up proving Ingle right. First Nelson become a world champion. Then Witter. And after that came Kell Brook and Abdul-Bari Awad.

And while there was no reconciliation before Brendan’s death in 2018, there is a happier postscript. Just before Covid, Hamed’s sons trained at the Ingle gym, and while they were there, Hamed popped in for a chat with Dominic and John.

“We ended up talking for four or five hours,” Dominic tells me. “My mum also came down and went: ‘All right, Naz?’ There was no animosity. That was always between Naz and my dad. We just talked about the old times and the good times.”

As I write, I am staring a photograph I took of them in the summer of 1995. Hamed is in the ring. Brendan is on the apron. It shows a moment of calm before the glory and the storm. It’s also a reminder of what was, and what might have been.