LONDON, England - 'Prince' Naseem Hamed sits on a chair in the centre of a room on the second floor of an upmarket hotel a short ringwalk from London's Leicester Square.

Behind him is a six-foot black and yellow banner emblazoned with the word ‘Giant’, the name of the film which charts the story of his life from seven-year-old Sheffield kid to featherweight champion of the world.

But among the usual trappings of a press junket like this, it is impossible to avoid the large elephant which sits alongside Naz in the room. “I don’t know about my life,” he says. “Because I didn’t have any input in this film.”

Instead, John and Dominic Ingle, the sons of Sheffield’s most famous boxing trainer Brendan, were the driving force behind the film’s plot, which centres around their dad’s ultimately rocky relationship with Hamed. It is perhaps the most famous fighter-trainer story in British boxing history and the film pulls no punches in regard to Hamed’s perceived treatment of Ingle.

It is why 51-year-old Hamed, perhaps the most exciting fighter in British boxing history, found Giant hard to watch at times and why it is surprising that he has played such a central role in its promotion.

“If somebody is going to do a film about you and you’ve got literally nothing to do with it, then things are going to be in there that you disagree with,” he tells The Ring.

“Some of it was challenging. Look, it's, it's not easy watching a movie made about you when you've had nothing to do with it. That's never going to be an easy thing for anyone.

“Things might come across in a certain way but it’s a movie isn’t it? Everybody knows it’s not my movie. It's a movie about a fighter and a trainer and what they thought happened. But is there any truth to it? Maybe some. But it's here and there on whether it's true or not. It says it's based on a true story but the fact is, it's a film that I support, simply because it's me.

“I remember finding out about the film for the first time and joking to my wife that I must have been good because they’re making movies about me. It’s a good feeling and there’s not many fighters that they do biopics about.

“And I enjoyed the fact they covered some aspects, whether they're all correct or not is different. I didn't have my spin on it. But regardless, I really like the way some of it comes across, especially the ending.”

The scene of which Hamed speaks will have experts in this particular narrative scratching their heads, given it depicts the fighter and his erstwhile trainer burying the hatchet after years of separation. They catch eyes at a fight and go backstage for a heart-to-heart which ends with the pair’s embrace.

This, of course, did not happen and Ingle died in 2018 aged 77 having never patched things up with the most famous fighter to emerge from his fabled Wincobank gym. Hamed, who paid an emotional tribute to Ingle on his passing, revealed that this scene struck a poignant chord with him.

He said: “I actually bumped into the director of the film Rowan [Athale] in the hotel and we got on really well. I said to him ‘I just want to let you know that I’ve watched the film three times now and every time something's different and it pops out and I get to understand it more. But the last scene with me and Brendan was so good and so truthful’.

“I wish it would have happened. That last scene really tells the truth about the movie. Imagine a director of a film hearing that from the person he has made the film on. He's nailed it. He's nailed it. But he left it until that vital moment of the end.”

Hamed initially walked through the doors at Ingle’s gym aged seven and boxed as an amateur at the club before turning professional on his 18th birthday in February 1992. Ingle and ‘The Naz Fella’ formed what looked like an inseparable bond throughout his journey to becoming world champion three years later but, behind the scenes, things were falling apart.

The main thrust of Giant’s storyline is that Hamed underappreciated Ingle’s contribution to his rise, claiming that his talent was God-given and not forged under the tutelage of his trainer in the gym. There was also a disagreement about Ingle’s management fees and the pair split acrimoniously in December 1998. They would never speak again.

“I tried reaching out so many times to make up with Brendan,” Hamed adds.”I wanted to say ‘listen, we've spent 18 years together, we shouldn't let this go too long’. But he wasn't having it and it wasn't written to happen and it wasn't meant to be.

“But to see that part of the film and try to imagine it, that it could have happened like that, it was nice that bit for me. It was nice because I can look back at that and think I only wish that did happen.”

Now, while he sits cheerily discussing the first film about his life, Hamed reveals to The Ring that he is already plotting the second one, which he will oversee.

“It's flattering that one day they can make a movie about you and you sit back and you just watch,” he says. “You're looking up at a bus and the whole advertisement is on buses all over the country. You see the advertisement on social media.

“But there's going to be a time in the future where we do an amazing documentary series where we show really what happened, the live footage and stuff like that. But, for now, I think people are going to like Giant.”