The Giant: Famous Ingle gym recreated in Leeds as filming for Sheffield boxing film starts

Across the world, fight fans know all about the famed Ingle gym, in Wincobank.

The place where the late Brendan Ingle, and his family, brought generations of talent on to the national and international scene.

The careers of the likes of Herol ‘Bomber’ Graham, Naseem Hamed, Ryan Rhodes, Johnny Nelson, Kid Galahad, Junior Witter, Esham Pickering, Jon 'Buster' Keeton, Glyn Rhodes, Brian Anderson, Paul 'Silky' Jones and Kell Brook were all honed and developed there.

There's only one Ingle gym, right?

Well, actually, not at the moment.

A second Ingle gym has been created...in the rival sporting city of Leeds.

It bears much of the hallmarks of the Sheffield base, once known as St Thomas' Boys & Girls Club.

And Brendan's son Dominic says it is more than a passable imitation.

The second gym is part of the set 'The Giant' a film dramatising the life of Brendan and Naz, and starring Pierce Brosnan as the veteran coach and Amir El-Masry as a young Naz on his way to global supremacy.

Dom, his brother John and John's son Luca met up with Brosnan at the West Yorkshire location recently.

Dom said it had been an "interesting experience" to witness Brosnan, 70, walking into the Ingle Gym Mark II looking and talking like his father, who passed away in 2018.

"Watching him perform and doing the moves and talking to the guy who is playing Naz, it takes you back a little bit," he told Boxing King Media.

He now has a "Hollywood father."

Some of the film is devoted to Hamed's early days, as he came through the tough system of performing in exhibition sessions at Sheffield and Rotherham working men's clubs, including Dial House and Shiregreen.

Initially, the producers had wanted to use the Wincobank gym, but that would have meant closing it down to its members, which wasn't going to happen, said Dom.

The set was a "good recreation of something that looks like our gym, it has got the lines on the floor..it kind of works."

A crew of 100 people was working on Giant, in Leeds.

There is something of an irony surrounding the choice of city to produce the film.

In 2019, after a break of many years, Hamed was presented with his Ring Magazine belt - but it didn't go down well with locals who booed him at Leeds’ First Direct Arena.

They didn't respect the former featherweight world champ because of his Sheffield connections, and it was the same night their idol Josh Warrington was fighting Wincobank's Kid Galahad.