SUPERFLY! Gal aims to be like Hamed
GALAL YAFAI will walk in his idol Prince Naseem Hamed’s footsteps after adding another chapter to a remarkable fighting family’s success.
The Birmingham flyweight landed Team GB’s first boxing gold at Tokyo 2020 with a convincing points win over Filipino street vendor Carlo Paalam.
In the closing rounds of the 20th century, Prince Naseem – born in Yorkshire of Yemeni descent – was a featherweight headline act whose walk-on razzmatazz often lasted longer than his fights.
Now Yafai is the latest standard bearer for his ancestors on the Arabian peninsula – and one of three champions from the same household.
Eldest brother Kal Yafai was the WBA super-flyweight champion for four years, and often didn’t get the credit he deserved, while fellow sibling Lalal won the European super-bantamweight title.
Now they have become the first family to produce world, European and Olympic champions.
And although he is in no rush to turn professional, Yafai’s dynamic style would be a worthy successor to Hamed’s showboating and ringcraft.
“Growing up, he was my idol,” said Yafai, 28, Britain’s first flyweight gold medallist at the Games since Terry Spinks in 1956.
“I was allowed to stay up and watch his fights. Being an Olympic champion, and then a world champion like
him, would be something else, but right now I don’t want to think about boxing any more.
“I want to rest, take it all in, I just want to eat some food – maybe a nice Five Guys, a few chips, burgers, nothing healthy.”
Yafai’s brothers joined him on a Zoom call after his 4-1 victory on the judges’ scorecards, which was never in doubt after he dumped former bin-dipper Paalam on the canvas in the opening round.
Paalam once scavenged landfill sites in the Philippines to sell recycled metals, and an Olympic silver medal is by far the biggest treasure he has discovered.
Yafai’s back-story is also unglamorous – he used to work on the shop floor at the giant Land
Rover plant in Solihull but found his assortment of menial tasks uninspiring.
He said: “If they’d told me in that car factory that I was going to be an Olympic champion, I’d have laughed.
“But to be fair, (head coach) Rob McCracken and all the GB Boxing coaches have been telling me, ‘Galal, you’re going to be the Olympic champion’ and I’d just say, ‘Nah, they’re just saying that to be nice to me’ – but they were right.
“If I go back to the plant now and show off my medal, do you think they might give me a Land Rover for free?
“I’m not sure I can afford one.”