THE PURSUIT of instant gratification is more than just a trait of modern society, it is a key feature, as the sport of boxing reflects.

There are already people screaming and shouting that Anthony Joshua, one of the best prospects we’ve seen in recent times, should be fighting elite fighters, challenging the world title contenders and champions, despite still being a 12-fight novice.

We see it across all sports – the relentless campaign to bring back Kevin Pietersen to the England Test side, even though he’s 34-years old and hardly the future, or in football where only the failure of your £30 million expensive Spanish striker creates a scenario where a club like Spurs punt on a player like Harry Kane.

Fans, managers, promoters, owners, all those involved in sport, just like in life, wants success yesterday, or at the very least, right this minute. Patience isn’t really seen to be a virtue in 2015, nor has it been for some time.

Unless your name is Lee Selby. The Barry boxing, Newport-trained fighter who is now the IBF featherweight champion of the world.

Wales’ 12th world champion, your third featherweight king behind Howard Winstone and Steve Robinson, reasonable company to be keeping!

Selby’s triumph on Saturday over Evgeny Gradovich, when he beat the IBF fighter of the year up over eight exciting and eye-catching rounds, was the tip of an extremely large iceberg, because Selby’s career has been stage-managed incredibly by his team.

And it is Selby’s team I’d like to focus on today. The unsung heroes behind the unsung hero.

There won’t be many people talking about Chris Sanigar or Tony Borg or the like today, as they assess Selby’s success, but the people in the background of Selby’s career do deserve enormous credit for the masterful and old school manner in which he’s been built up.

But then, in crediting those in the background for Selby, we need to go all the way back to Barry and his formative years spent in the Rhoose ABC gym before he linked with the Splott Adventure ABC, now the home of Gary Lockett’s stable.

Selby has, however, been in St Joseph’s in Newport’s city centre since around the time he turned professional and it was a natural fit, considering the close relationship St Joes has enjoyed with West Country Boxing, the management company that have represented Selby right throughout his time in the paid ranks.

Chris Sanigar, a former fighter turned manager and trainer, is the guiding light for Selby, the man the entire Selby family trust with plotting Lee’s route to the pinnacle of the sport.

It isn’t promoter Eddie Hearn who has taken Selby out to America for sparring regularly over the past few years, opening his eyes to the world he’ll be entering when he headlines in Vegas or New York for the first time, it was Sanigar, a guy who lives and breathes the sport.

He’s already steered Glenn Catley and Adrian Stone to world titles, albeit 15-years ago, and there has never been a doubt in his mind that he’d get Lee there too. But it was a case, as he’s told me countless times over the years, of doing it properly.

Selby is 28-years old now and his credentials speak for themselves. He’s won every title he could on the way up to world level and then has beaten a genuine world champion, in his fifth defence of his title. There can be no questioning the legitimacy of Selby’s ascent and subsequent reward.

Credit also, to the Selby family. Lee and his kin have endured tragedy most of us can’t imagine when Lee lost his older brother Michael Slevin in an accident at the tender age of 23, but you’ll find few family units as close, or fighters more humble and respectful than Lee, now a father himself and clearly head over heels for partner Meggie.

He’s a thoughtful, engaging and polite young man who is a credit to all those around him.

None more so than his trainers, stablemates and apprentices at St Joes.

From Tony Borg and Bill Reynolds to Junior Borg and the newer generation of coaches, St Joes has become a fairytale success story for their volume of champion fighters, amateur and professional.

Selby’s triumph as a world champion is the icing on the cake and the youngsters who rub shoulders with Lee in the gym will scarcely believe their eyes the next time the Welsh Mayweather heads in for a work out.

Selby is a supreme talent and can be a superstar of a Welsh champion, but he won’t forget the people who got him there.

And neither should we.