The city of Sheffield was brought into sharp focus this past week in boxing.

First by the figure of ‘Prince’ Naseem Hamed, who surfaced in Soho as part of the promotion for a film about his life which he was quick to point out had absolutely nothing to do with him.

The response to his multiple media appearances leading up to Wednesday’s premiere in Leicester Square was about as polarising as it always is. For some, he is British boxing’s most exciting boxer ever who electrified the sport and provided a gateway to it for average sports fans. For others, he is the most over-rated fighter in history who was exposed as such by Marco Antonio Barrera in 2001.

Regardless of where you stand on the debate, Hamed was a man who provoked opinion and for people of a certain age (i.e. mine) the film, 'Giant', is an enjoyable look back on what was a tremendous time for British boxing. But this is not a film that paints Hamed in a particularly positive light as it centres on the breakdown of his relationship with Brendan Ingle, Sheffield’s most feted trainer.

The pair infamously split in 1998 after a disagreement about Ingle’s management fees but it was a riff which seemed to run far deeper than that given the pair first met when Naz was only seven years old. As such, Ingle has often been described as a ‘father figure’ to the boxer but that was one particular description Hamed was keen to refute this last week. “I had a father figure at home,” he said.

Regardless, Hamed insists he tried countless times to patch things up with Ingle but the Irish-born legend died in 2018 without ever coming close to a reconciliation. There would be no fairytale ending for the pair but rather a wreckage the like of which only boxing could produce.

The duo officially parted ways just 18 months on from the night Hamed beat American veteran Tom Johnson to unify the WBO and IBF featherweight titles at the old London Arena. But back in his home town that same night, February 8, 1997, a baby was born.

The doting parents decided to call him Dalton.

The father, Grant, would go on to become Sheffield’s most significant trainer since Ingle and on Saturday night he and his son rolled around in the centre of the Barclays Center ring in celebration for what the kid had just done. More than two decades of hard graft in his Steel City Gym, a few miles south of Ingle's in Wincobank, had come to fruition as the feared Subriel Matias was stopped in New York. There was not a dry eye in Casa Taylor as the father and son embraced on the canvas.

And while the emergence of the Hamed-Ingle story laid bare the harm a sport like boxing can do to a relationship which had seemed unbreakable, Mr and Mr Smith, from across the same city, provided the antidote. Let’s not forget that this is a sport littered with decimated father-son relationships, too, but in Brooklyn, Grant and his only son Dalton were rewarded for their endeavours. That they did it a single subway ride away from Madison Square Garden, the scene of Hamed's incredible victory over Kevin Kelley, provided a strange twist of fate to proceedings, too.

This year brings up two decades since Smith Sr. was hit by one of Sheffield’s 56-tonne Supertrams while he was out running. A caliper of the vehicle’s windscreen wiper went through his head and he was left temporarily blind and deaf and required surgery on his brain. Smith signed himself out of hospital within a fortnight and got back to the gym.

At that time young Dalton was just nine but, under the tutelage of his father, has since become the latest world champion to emerge from the remarkable Steel City, joining a list alongside the likes of Hamed, Johnny Nelson, Kell Brook and Paul ‘Silky’ Jones. The 28-year-old’s grandad Brian, Grant's father and right-hand man, as well as his two sisters Gervan and Chelsea, joined in the celebrations back in the changing room.

“This has never been done in history,” Smith Sr. said after his son’s victory. “An ABA schoolboy title, a British schoolboy title, an ABA junior title, a British junior title, A GB youth title, a senior ABA title, English, British outright in 12 months, European, Commonwealth and now WBC world champion, baby. That’s never been done in the history of England Boxing.”

And the truth is, it might never happen again.