0 Comments | Evening Standard; London (UK), Jan 5, 2010 | by Mihir Bose

IT IS not easy to put Frank Warren down. Many, including a hit man, the tax man and several boxers he has promoted have tried, but all have failed.

Warren can be so protective of what people say that when the Daily Mirror got one fact wrong in a largely complimentary article he sued and was paid a reported Pounds 10,000 in damages.

He liked the piece and the writer but objected to the allegation that he was raised in the “gutter”.

“I was brought up on a council house in Islington. People who live in council houses don’t live in the gutter. He insulted my mother,” he says as we chat in the Landmark Hotel opposite Marylebone Station.

Indeed Warren, who celebrates his 58th birthday next month, is proud of the roots that gave him the fortitude necessary to tackle a life story that has been a chronicle of many fights.

The son of a bookmaker, he never planned to be a boxing promoter, claiming it was “pure accident as I was doing a favour for a cousin”.

But in his early career he took on the British Boxing Board of Control and the established promoters who controlled the sport. In the 30 years since, he has guided many of Britain’s best fighters to world titles, but splits with three of them have left their scars.

In each case, Warren believes he was the one wronged. First there was Naseem Hamed, rated by the promoter as the “most talented fighter I was ever involved with”.

Warren took him on in 1993 when Hamed was 19. “He was a kid, he needed direction,” explains Warren. “Nobody was interested in him. His target market was youngsters and we really hit the spot with the kids magazines.

Naz was like Marmite — you either loved him or hated him.”

But while Warren loved the Hamed Marmite, the feeling did not extend to his older brother Riath, who he feels did Naseem a “disservice”.

Barely able to conceal his contempt, Warren says: “When I met him, Riath was the Yemeni liaison community officer for Sheffield. Suddenly this guy became Jerry Maguire.”

The split came when Hamed went to fight Wayne McCullough in Atlantic City in October 1998. “Naseem was very rude, totally out of control,” adds Warren. “I learned that Riath was in New York negotiating with another promoter. I decided to pack up. Naz’s dad, Sal, a really nice guy, came up to me and said, ‘Frank, please don’t go.’ But I walked away.”

Even now, the split is tinged with a touch of regret. “Naseem never really fulfilled his potential,” he adds.

“He was the most athletic kid I had ever seen. He could lie on the bottom of the swimming pool for three minutes holding his breath. But he is now the size of a house. If he tried that, he would sink.”

Hamed, like many other boxers, suffered from what Warren believes is narcissism. “For a lot of them it is me, me, me,” he insists.

“Boxers who are good at something get the best treatment and they become very self-centred.”

As with Hamed, Warren claims he never personally fell out with his second great pugilist, Ricky Hatton, even though their dispute was so far reaching that the former welterweight world champion had to pulp his own life story after the promoter successfully sued him for libel.

“I never had a cross word with Ricky. The argument was with his dad, who was his manager. At the end of the day it became bitter. It was a shame.”

But such sympathy vanishes when Warren talks about Joe Calzaghe. Last March, a court action brought by Warren’s company Sports Network Ltd for alleged breach of contract resulted in the judge awarding the Welshman Pounds 1.8million. Sports Network Ltd were forced into administration.

“Calzaghe is one of the more selfish ones,” Warren says.

“He pulled out of fights because of phantom injuries. In his book he says he was going to pull out of the Jeff Lacy bout, 10 days before the contest. His father rang to tell me Joe had a hand injury. We had postponed the fight twice already. The press had built up Lacy, so I told Joe, ‘You can beat this guy with one hand.’ He agreed to fight and in the end he threw 1,000 punches.”

The contest in Manchester in March 2006 saw Calzaghe, in one of his best displays, demolish Lacy and unify the super-middleweight division.

The parting of the ways with the Welshman eventually came a year later but Warren nonchalantly brushed aside the damage his business suffered as a result of his unsuccessful scrap with Calzaghe. “I am still in boxing, even though my company is in administration. Businesses are going bust all the time — that is just the environment we are in at the moment. Things happen.”

And things do seem to happen to Warren, who with some justice can claim that, but for events, he might no longer be alive. At Christmas 1988, he was booked on Pan Am 103, only to cancel two days before the ill-fated flight was brought down over Scotland by a terrorist bomb
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