4. The Day the Music Died Part 2: Usman “Uzzy” Ahmed does a perfect Naz Hamed impersonation then gets knocked out cold
Previous Episodes in this Series: 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5
If the Anthony Hembrick part of this series was a cautionary tale about showboating, the Usman Ahmed-Ashley Sexton fight is a five-alarm fire of a warning.
If you decide to showboat, you could get embarrassed. How embarrassed? Let me tell you…
The date was January 22, 2010. Usman Ahmed and Ashley “Flash Ash” Sexton were matched for the British Boxing Board of Control English flyweight championship at the Brentwood Centre in Brentwood, Essex, United Kingdom.
By 2010, the flashy and enormously talented southpaw featherweight champion Naseem “Naz” Hamed had retired, and British boxing may or may not have had room for a new fighting showman to step up and show the world he legitimately had the goods.
The 6-2-1 Usman decided to take his shot at glory by going “Full Naz” during an extended ring walkout to face Sexton, then 8-0 (4 KOs), dancing and mugging and, basically, showing his ass to the world in the face of a tough domestic challenge he wasn’t assured to win.
Sometimes, “he who dares wins.” Sometimes, he who dares ends up asleep on the canvas.
Sexton won the bout via a stunning one-punch knockout two minutes into the very first round that had commentators calling for immediate medical assistance.
Ahmed recovered and soldiered on to have a respectable career, finishing in 2016 with a record of 8-9-2 and no knockouts. Sexton finished in 2022 with a record of 17-3-2 (5 KOs).
