Kid Galahad ready for his night of destiny with Josh Warrington

He needed it on his path to a world title fight, the opportunity in his hands in Leeds tonight, a Yemeni whose father was in the Qatari special forces before the family moved to England and began running Mo’s Grocery Store in Toxteth. Eleven of them lived in a three-bedroom house above the shop. “There were so many shootings and things going on in the area that I was never even allowed outside,” he says. “We used to sit on our little doorstep and watch gangs nick cars or whatever else they were doing.” His mother was from Sheffield but even there, Galahad concedes that Ingle’s intervention and fatherly guidance was the difference between a potential world champion and a world of trouble; “dead or in prison,” as Galahad imagines his parallel universe. Ingle, the wily boxing trainer and a face of the Steel City, died last year but left behind a more rounded Kid than he inherited. His work with Galahad and Wincobank’s honing of the featherweight’s craft could manifest itself in an IBF belt when Galahad fights Josh Warrington this evening. “When that title’s around my waist, he’ll be smiling from above,” says Galahad. Ingle liked to smile. The Irishman had a knack for making men out of lost souls but he was never in the business of creating angels. Four years ago, Galahad tested positive for a banned steroid and was banned by the British Boxing Board of Control, a suspension which has been raised constantly during his verbal exchanges with Warrington. The reigning IBF champion and a huge draw in his home city, resents Galahad’s refusal to apologise and the fact that the 28-year-old is in the ring with him when unification bouts were on offer elsewhere. Galahad maintains that an energy drink was spiked by his brother during a family dispute. The argument has gone round in circles and neither fighter is conceding any ground. Galahad felt devoted to Ingle, to his ethos and his outlook on life. Ingle, who first encountered Galahad as a 13-year-old, would tell him the same thing repeatedly: “You can’t beg, borrow or buy practical experience.” “The second I walked in (to Ingle’s gym) I thought ‘this is me’,” says Galahad. “When you spend time with Brendan, being around him, he could have told me to jump off a bridge and I’d have jumped off a bridge because that’s how much trust I had in him. “For years and years, he’d repeat himself all the time. I used to think ‘is this guy just going on or what?’ But he wasn’t. What he was doing was brainwashing me so when I got into those positions, I’d feel like I’d already been there before.” The output from Wincobank has been phenomenal over the years but Naseem Hamed is still Ingle’s finest product, irrespective of the way in which their relationship deteriorated for a while. It was Hamed who first directed Galahad to Ingle’s gym when the pair met by chance at a local mosque. “If it wasn’t for Naseem Hamed I wouldn’t be boxing,” says Galahad. “When I met him I said ‘Naz, I want to be a champion.’ He said ‘if you want to be a champion like me you need to go and find this guy called Brendan Ingle.’ That’s when I went looking for him. The rest is history.” Hamed will be at the First Direct Arena tonight and in Galahad’s corner, metaphorically. “He says ‘this kid (Warrington) is built for you, he’s perfect for you’,” says Galahad. “Saturday night, you’re going to see.” Galahad’s demeanour in promotional events has been paradoxical. There is confidence in some of what he says – Warrington would describe it as arrogance – but a tendency to sit quietly while his trainer, Dominic Ingle, speaks for him. Warrington has held the IBF belt for the past year and lit up 2018 by reshaping the featherweight division with brutal defeats of Lee Selby and Carl Frampton. The Leeds fighter has gone from being a world champion to looking and sounding like one. Galahad lacks top-level experience and has none of Warrington’s crowd-pulling power. Warrington’s father and trainer Sean O’Hagan joked that Galahad had “sold 65 tickets. They’re coming in their droves.” “You’ve got to remember I’ve been around big fights, like when Kell Brook fought Shawn Porter and (Gennady) Golovkin,” says Galahad. “He hasn’t been around that. I’ve been bred for this, he hasn’t been bred for this. “I know it might not be my experience but when you’re around it you pick up things, you see things, you know what the crack is. In Arabic we call it Maktub. That means destiny. I believe it’s written. It’s already written, me beating Josh Warrington.” There is plenty stacked against him. A large crowd at the First Direct Arena, where Warrington’s story grew legs, will be typically partisan and no-one can wash over the beatings Warrington gave Selby and Frampton. Galahad made the point that Warrington has recorded just six stoppages as a professional – Galahad’s perfect 26-fight record shows 15 – but Frampton admitted after his defeat in December that the force of Warrington’s punches was being under-estimated by many. “He’s going to try and implement his game-plan, I’m going to try and implement mine,” says Galahad. “He’s going to resist but when I go and put it on him, I know. What’s the secret to beating him? Wait until Saturday.” He and Warrington have never been too far away from each other. They made their debuts against the same opponent, Delroy Spencer, within weeks of each other in 2009 and were shortlisted for the Boxing Writers Club’s young-fighter-of-the-year award in 2014. “He might not have thought it but somewhere down the line, I knew I’d end up fighting him,” says Galahad. A couple of months before he died, Ingle gave Galahad a T-shirt from a collection of memorabilia. Galahad thought nothing of it until after Ingle’s death but discovered that it was promotional clothing from Hamed’s bout with Tom Johnson in 1997, the night when Hamed first claimed the IBF title which Warrington defends this evening. “Underneath his house he had lots of stuff left over,” says Galahad. “He gave me this black t-shirt and I didn’t think anything of it. I hung it up and left it. “When he passed away I was thinking about it and I had a look. It was ‘Boom Boom’ Johnson against Naseem Hamed for the IBF title and I thought ‘f****** hell, look at that! What coincidence is that? I’m fighting for the IBF title and Brendan’s given me this’.” Galahad would call it destiny.