Naseem Hamed takes the title in the rain in Cardiff

Steve Robinson's route to a world title was one of the more unusual in British boxing. In April 1993 the WBO featherweight champion, Ruben Palacios, was stripped of the title before a fight with John Davison. The promoters had two days to find a replacement. Robinson took the fight and won it on points. He became known as the Cinderella Man.

Over the next two and a half years he defended the title seven times. By the autumn of 1995 he was an established champion, fighting at home in Cardiff.

The challenger was Naseem Hamed, 21, from Sheffield, who had come up from bantamweight. Before the fight he had a van fitted out with a recorded message: "I'm the prince. I'm going to be king."

The fight

The weather in Cardiff was wet and windy, and 16,000 people sat through it at Cardiff Arms Park. Robinson had a plan: keep a high guard and patiently work his way into range. It never came off. Hamed fought with what Boxing News called extraordinary extravagance and bravado, and Robinson could not find a way in.

In the fifth round Hamed landed three hooks and an uppercut, and Robinson went down. He got up and carried on, but the fight was now running entirely one way.

In the eighth Hamed landed a left hook that took Robinson's legs from under him. He stayed on his feet, but the referee could see he had nothing left and stopped the fight. Boxing News wrote that Hamed had barely broken sweat.

The showman and the fighter

The van and the recorded message were typical of Hamed, and it is easy to let the showmanship obscure what happened in the ring. Robinson was a proper champion with seven defences, and Hamed dismantled him in his own city.

Hamed went on to a career in which he lost only once, on points to Marco Antonio Barrera. Robinson, the man who took a title fight at two days' notice, had made the title his own for two and a half years. Cardiff was where it ended.