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Shah in the mould to be Brendan's next world beater
BRENDAN Ingle's diary has September pencilled in for the start of something special.
The veteran boxing coach believes he is working with a young talent to match that of the best of the best ever to emerge from his gym in Newman Road, Sheffield.
The acid tests for Blackburn, Lancashire-born Ali Shah begins in autumn.
By then the 10 bouts, nine wins of his amateur career will be history and the punching for pay begins.
“He’ll be a world champion, ah yeah, definitely,” says Ingle.
That’s a sentence readily pronounced by the Irishman over the years. He’s been wrong before but, more importantly, he’s also been right to hype.
Shah, just 20 years old and with only nine months of dedicated gym life under his belt, certainly believes the path taken by Naseem Hamed, Johnny Nelson and Junior Witter from Wincobank to world acclaim can be his route map.
“ I’ve learned more in nine months here in the gym than others have in 10 years,” Shah contends.
Commitment is there too alongside slab loads of self assurance.
Shah has embraced Ingle’s unrelenting three training sessions a day regime.
He has knuckled down and come up with a touch of star quality and a bit of swagger.
“I went with Brendan and some of the others to a prison to give an exhibition, the inmates ended up crowding around me like the paparazzi or something,” he recalls.
Ingle has no problem smilingly substantiating that story.
Shah intends to package himself as an entertainer and a winner.
He’s 6ft 2in and that’s basketball tall for a light welterweight but he has studied the Naseem Hamed fight tapes, made it his business to be steeped in the proud history of the Ingle academy.
The plan to make history of his own begins in September. For Shah it can’t happen too soon.
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Weather for Sheffield
Thursday 24 May 2012
Today
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