The strict distinction between amateur and professional boxing was for many years one of the last remaining bastions in British sport.

Long after separate entrances for Gentlemen and Players had been removed from Lord’s, and the barriers between Union and League in rugby had been dismantled, pro boxers were barred from being in the same room at functions, let alone the same gymnasion or, heaven forfend, the same ring as sparring partners.

No less a personage than Lord Colin Moynihan, Olympic silver medallist rowing cox who was to become Thatcher’s disobedient Sports Minister and then head the British Olympic Association, was actually disciplined by the bigoted blazers of the Amateur Boxing Association for sparring with pros in London’s famed pugilistic academy, the Thomas A’Becket, while holding an Oxford blue for boxing. Ironically, he was later to serve as a steward of the professional British Boxing Board of Control.

Fortunately the lights have been punched out of such prejudice and nowadays pro-am is more or less the name of the fight game, with several of Britain’s elite 2012 podium squad earning more as amateurs than they might as fledgling pros. And the newly-constructed World Series tournament offers prize money which can amount to six figures without Olympic status being threatened.

The ultimate recognition that peace has broken out between the once-warring factions comes when the cognoscenti of clout gather in Cardiff at the end of the month to celebrate the fight game’s biggest global festival.

A highlight of the World Boxing Council’s ‘Night of Champions’ will not be a pro world title fight, as you might expect, but an amateur international between Great Britain and the Rest of the World. It also features the first-ever appearance in Britain of members of the  Chinese national boxing team who are testing Cardiff as a potential 2012 Olympic training base.

At the same time this historic fistic jamboree will laud one of the great Welsh icons of the ring, the late world featherweight champion Howard Winstone, who was also an outstanding amateur, with the premiere of a compelling film which depicts his bitter-sweet life story.

Directed by the award-winning Merthyr-based Neil Jones, "Risen" tells of the boyo with the dazzling fists and footwork who, despite losing three fingertips of his right hand in an industrial accident, rose during the sixties to become the pugilistic Prince of Wales. Nine former champions play the parts of some of boxing’s best-known figures in the first bio-pic about a British fighter ever made.

The premiere is on the opening night of the big bash taking place over three days, from July 29-31 and assembled with the assistance of another of Britain’s outstanding ex-world champions and ABA champions, the welterweight  king John H Stracey. The £300,000 cavalcade of fistiana is backed by the Cardiff City Council and the Welsh Assembly. A parade of 100 past and present world champions are scheduled to attend what is claimed will be biggest collection of champions in history, headed by heavyweight sibling tsars Vitaliy and Wladimir Klitschko.

London-born Stracey, 59, who climbed off the canvas to record one of British boxing’s most epic overseas victories, a fifth round ko of the legendary Jose Napoles in the Mexican’s own bullring backyard in 1975, says: "The WBC President, Jose Sulaiman, thought Cardiff would be an ideal location because per capita Wales has had more world champions than any other country. From Jimmy Wilde and Jim Driscoll to Joe Calzaghe, boxing has always been a very vibrant part of the Welsh culture."



According to the organisers 85 champions are already confirmed with up to a further 40 anticipated. In the great tradition of the thick-ear trade there will be wet eyes rather than black eyes when old foes who belted bits off each other years ago lock themselves in long-held embraces. None more so than the reunion of Britain’s 58-year-old Alan Minter and the Italian Vito Antuofermo against whom he won and successfully defended the world middleweight title 30 years ago.

Regrettably, some big-wheel champions have demanded exorbitant appearance money and expenses for entourages (one wanted to bring over 30 ‘friends and family’) and won’t be there. Muhammad Ali, naturally, was among the first to be asked but is too ill to travel though two of his toughest opponents, George Chuvalo and Earnie Shavers, who both took him the fierce-hitting battles, have accepted..

Based at Cardiff International Arena there is also a gala dinner with Oscar-style awards for services to boxing and the unsung heroes of the sport. Fans will be able to mingle with the famous at shopping arcades, tourist spots and community centres.

Those of us who recall the silky, scintillating skills of the soft-spoken father-of-five Winstone, the little Welshman who brought such grace and guile to the ring, look forward to the film with relish.

Winstone (pictured) was born and raised in Merthyr Tydfil and it was in the town's Prince Charles Hospital that he ended his days 61 years later, virtually penniless, pained by a broken marriage and a body wracked with illness largely brought on by excessive drinking, an all-too familiar tale once the hand bandages have been unwrapped for the last time.

His trainer Eddie Thomas, himself a notable champion,  claimed that children born in the valleys were so angry that they came out with their fists clenched.

As a youngster Winstone had been something of a fiery brawler in the amateur ring, where he won 83 of 86 bouts and gained an Empire Games gold medal in 1958. But in his teens he sustained the near-ruinous right hand injury in an accident while working in a toy factory. He continued to box but lost much of his power and was forced to drastically change his technique, Thomas re-moulding the young Winstone in his Penydarren gym, teaching him the fast left jab that would become his trademark. 

The highlight of his nuine-year, 67-bout career was the acquistion of the world title against Japan’s Mitsunori Seki in January 1986 - his fourth attempt. Stewart Brennan, the actor who plays Winstone (Shane Ritchie also stars as one of his promoters, Mike Barrett and multi-weight world champion Erik Morales portrays the late Mexican great Vicente Saldivar, a fearsome foe who later became Howard’s friend) trained for five years for a role which brings realism to movie scenes unlike anything from ‘Rocky’.

With Winstone’s almost total reliance on his left jab, the film is a fitting tribute to Welsh boxing’s leading man on an occasion that demonstrates why the camaraderie of the ring no longer has artificial boundaries.

Alan Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday, and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered 11 summer Olympics and scores of world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire, and is a former chairman of the Boxing Writers’ Club.