The life of enigmatic trainer Brendan Ingle is headed to the silver screen with Pierce Brosnan in the lead role.
Irish-born Ingle, who started a boxing dynasty in Sheffield at his famed Wincobank Gym, created numerous champions at all levels, including Naseem Hamed, Johnny Nelson, Kell Brook, Kid Galahad, Herol Graham, Brian Anderson and countless others, passed away in XX but his sons Dominic and John are involved with the film, which is being shot a few miles away in Leeds.
Another actor, Paddy Considine, a friend of Ingles and a major fight fan who starred and directed in the Journeyman movie, was involved at the start of the project.
“Originally, Paddy got in touch with me about this film and Sylvester Stallone’s production company had been on to him to play the part of my dad,” explained Dominic ingle. “That was good, because obviously he’s known my dad a long time, and he got a script together, we met with the writers, went through some of the storylines and basically they took off what they’d seen on the internet, which is obviously a different kind of version of events, and me and John sat down with him over a few days over a period of weeks, telling stories about Naz and Brendan back in the day, how he started, the stuff my dad had told us and the experiences John had with Naz when he trained him as an amateur…”
John and Dominic have carved out their own successful careers in boxing and Dominic explained how Brosnan came to be involved.
“They [the film company] got a bit of a hold up and they put it on hold a little bit, because they had an original date for Paddy to start doing the acting, then they put it on hold again and when they came back with the next date, Paddy couldn’t do it because he had other film commitments, so it kind of got shelved,” said Ingle.
The project was again revisited a couple of months ago and restarted with Brosnan as the star. The former James Bond has subsequently visited the famous Ingle Gym, strolled up the hill to the local store that Naseem Hamed’s family used to own and spent time being taken around the area where, famously, Ingle fighters would sweep the streets in a successful bid for the community to take pride in their area.
Brosnan also told the Ingles his own story, of being born in Dublin – like Brendan – being educated by the Christian Brothers, who schooled Brendan, the various similarities and overlaps, and also how Brosnan’s middle name is Brendan.
Brosnan was also there for some of the biggest nights that Brendan and Naz shared, a relationship which is likely the focal point of the film.
”Pierce was there when Naz won the world title, against [Steve] Robinson [in Cardiff],” Dominic added. “He was also at the Kevin Kelly fight [Naz’s breakthrough fight in New York’s Madison Square Garden], and everybody was coming into the changing room, I think Daniel Day-Lewis was there, and Pierce Brosnan came in and my dad was bandaging Naz’s hands but he’s got his back to the entrance of the room and Pierce walks in and Naz says, ‘Brendan, it’s James Bond.’
“My dad turned round and was like, ‘What are you on about Naz? That’s not James Bond.
“’James Bond is Sean Connery’.
“Because my dad never watched James Bond beyond Roger Moore and Sean Connery, and we started laughing in the room. Naz said, ‘It’s James Bond’ and Brendan said, ‘No, it’s not. It’s not’.
“Pierce never mentioned anything [then] but when we spoke the other day when he came down, he said, ‘It kind of levelled me that comment. I was riding high at the time doing all the Bond stuff and when he said that he brought me back down to earth’.”
Filming started last month in a mocked-up gym in Leeds because the Wincobank Gym could not close down for several weeks, but some of the youngsters in the Ingle Gym might be cast in small rolls and walk-on parts.
Following around eight weeks of filming, the movie will take around a year to edit.
Brendan Ingle has been on the ballot to be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame for several years, and maybe the nudge from a movie will push him towards the front of the queue.
While that is something his family would like, Dominic said things like that never motivated his father.
“If he gets in the Hall of Fame or not, the main thing is he’ll always be remembered for what he’s done and I think that’s all that he was bothered about,” said Dominic. “Awards and ceremonies, he was never particularly bothered about. I think he was more concerned with helping the people he helped than getting his name up in lights with the boxing training. It was about the people he brought through.”
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