A flaming desire to be recognised as the greatest featherweight in the world will spell disaster for Scarborough's Paul Ingle, according to Prince Naseem Hamed.

The Sheffield ring king has warned Ingle to expect a better than ever Prince when they meet in Manchester on Saturday for Hamed's World Boxing Organisation featherweight crown.

It will be the first fight of Hamed's reign since splitting with trainer Brendan Ingle and manager Frank Maloney.

Instead, Hamed has called on the promotional skills of Barry Hearn - who promoted his first professional fights - and his new trainer is the little-known Puerto Rican Oscar Suarez.

The improvements, says Hamed, are immense.

"I have never had so much fire in my belly and it's time to prove it to the world I am the best," he declared.

For the first time ever, Hamed has taken the time to study videos of his opponent in action.

"I have never studied a fighter before the way I have studied Paul Ingle," said the Prince.

"I have watched videos of other fighters and then switched them off after a couple of minutes but this is a totally different way of thinking for me now.

"I have watched all Paul's tapes to break down his weaknesses and those weaknesses are going to be exposed on April 10."

Pocket rocket Hamed, unbeaten in 31 fights, said he has never trained as hard for a fight.

"Come fight night I will have spent 10 weeks in training. I have never punched so hard, never felt so sharp and my weight has never been so perfect.

"I cannot say you will see a totally different Naz but you will still see an exciting one.

"I just cannot wait to get my hands on him and show my ability on the night."

Hamed believes this will be his last fight in Britain this year and almost certainly his last fight before the new Millennium.

"I want to be boxing as regularly as I can and in Manchester, London, everywhere in England if I can," said the champion.

"But I still want to go to the States and prove myself. I have got a lot of mouths out there to shut and I am going to do that, although it may take me some time."

Ingle and Hamed were coming face to face in Manchester today at a final pre-fight press conference.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.