Dennis Hobson column: If Waleed Din had won title, it would be a different story

Waleed Din says he wants to part company with you. What does his immediate future hold?
Waleed Din lost this critical match, against Thomas EssombaWaleed Din lost this critical match, against Thomas Essomba
Waleed Din lost this critical match, against Thomas Essomba

Myself and Asif Vali have decided not to continue to co-promote Waleed. We’ve invested quite a lot of money in him, and I am still his manager. Waleed doesn’t want to compete at anything other than light-fly or straw-weight, which means getting him international opportunities. We had an EU title fight offered to us the other week but it was at flyweight and he doesn’t want to campaign at that. So, it’s a difficult one and sometimes fighters want to hit out and blame others. We’ve invested a lot of money into Waleed and sometimes kids don’t appreciate it. He lost that Commonwealth title fight and that inevitably knocked him back. I don’t have a magic wand, but in boxing some kids appreciate what you do and others don’t. If he’d have won that Commonwealth fight then we’d be talking a whole different story and if he didn’t want to compete at flyweight then why take the fight?

You have a nine fight show planned for July 30 - how many do you realistically expect to go ahead?

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Pullouts happen in boxing unfortunately, and we’ve had our fair share recently. The main two fights are Sam Sheedy v Andrew Robinson and Lewis Taylor v Alfredo Meli, and both are Commonwealth title eliminators. Both are great matches, they’re both 50-50, and those two fights are worth the entrance money alone.

The recently-suggested prospect of Keith Thurman v Kell Brook: is this the fight we’ve all been waiting for?

It’s not the fight we’ve all been waiting for, but it would be a good one. The fight everyone has been waiting for is against Amir Khan, but that’s less likely. Thurman is a quality fighter and it will give Kell more credibility fighting someone like him. Thurman makes mistakes, he’s not Floyd Mayweather but he can whack and I think he’d be a more exciting opponent than Jessie Vargas. Vargas is less well-known over here and Kell needs to fight someone like Thurman to get into the even bigger fights.

Your view on Kid Galahad’s return?

It’s like anybody else, once someone has served their sentence and paid their dues, he’s served his suspension and should be able to get on with it. Hopefully he’s learned from any mistakes and we need to let him get on with earning a living. Draw a line, move on and hopefully he won’t get involved in anything like that again. It has been a shame though, it doesn’t do the sport any good.