Train like a challenger when you are the champ: Azumah Nelson

Africa's greatest ever boxer turned 62 this week and I recall a chat to celebrate his career

Sporting personalities are a dime dozen in countries like Ghana. It is to be expected in a country that is passionate about sports and the fame it has brought to it.

Sports heroes, however, are a different category. We look to these persons to be role models who typify virtues like courage, discipline, strong character, and success. The achievements on the sporting floor alone is not enough. In addition to winning the physical contest, the hero must negotiate other conflicts: the technicalities of the game's rules; overcoming physical pain; and negotiating the pitfalls of private self-doubt.

As Robert Lipsyte and Peter Levine say in Idols of the Game;

“Because their lives helped, in part, to shape our values, habits, and, arguably, the content of our character, no full understanding of America is possible without an understanding of its sports idols…”

The same principle applies in Ghana and none typifies that more than Azumah Nelson

He might be getting grayer by the year as he enjoys his sixties, but the youthful twinkle in the eye of Azumah Nelson remains an ever present fixture.

He is not pretentious as shown by an offer to join him in a breakfast of kenkey and fish before this Q&A session at an eatery in East Legon. He laughed after I refused the offer.

His retort -”You are missing some very good kenkey”.

How are you doing champ?

By God’s grace I am strong and I can move around. When I compare myself with some of my colleagues, I feel sad. For me to be like this I know God is looking after me

Let us start from your first taste of international glory. The Edmonton Commonwealth Games of 1978. Is that where you felt the greatness?

No. From the start I always knew i was bound for greatness. I have always had confidence in my abilities and knew I would become a world champion one way or the other.

You missed the Olympics too in your storied career. How is that so?

I always looked forward to winning an Olympic medal.Nobody had won an Olympic gold for Ghana and I wanted to be the first to break that barrier. We were preparing when the announcement of an African boycott of the games came through. South Africa’s apartheid regime had caught global attention and as part of it we could not go. That is how my Olympic dream ended. I could not wait for another four years. Time was not on my side because in boxing you cannot be old. You have to be fast so I turned professional.

Did you have a supportive family?

When I was an amateur I saw chap fighting at featherweight. I was watching with some family members and I told them i was going to beat the guy if I ever faced him. One of my uncles was passing and he was quite upset. He accused me of being too known and what’s not. One of the guys around was a tailor and I recall him telling me not to mind my uncle. It really was upsetting for me because this was my uncle. I him expected to always back me up and encourage me . I told my friends not to worry. A few years later I became national champion and guess who I beat. After the win that uncle was present and he jumped into the ring to carry me. Too bad for me, I could not remind him he had said a few years back I could not beat that guy.

The Salvador Sanchez fight. Tell me about that.

I was at home when my manager came to me and said “We have a chance to fight for the world title, do you want it?” I said of course. When? He said in two weeks. I smiled and said no problem. It was dangerous to do that, but I just loved boxing. I was also at the time to have a very good coach who tutored me to have an excellent defense. Boxing is an art and I believed I was an artist at the time. I took the fight and we went to America.

Was it your first time in the USA?

It wasn’t my first trip to America. I had been to New York before as part of a world cup of boxing team so you could say I knew my way around America a bit .

You lost the fight though. What was the mystery behind the mouth guard?

When we got to America they gave me a sparring partner. This guy after sparring went and told on me to Don King. He in turn confronted the matchmaker, a British chap called Mickey Duff about why he had brought such a tough guy on short notice to face his fighter. Duff told him not to worry and that he had a plan to handle the situation. On the day of the fight, I could not find my regular mouthguard. So we went to the amateur shop and got a new one. I put it in hot water and tried it on.It was slightly big so I took a blade and trimmed a part off, but it made the edges rough. The fight started well enough ,but in the sixth round, Sanchez landed a left hook to my jaw and cut my lip. I was bleeding badly.By the seventh round I was exhausted but I was determined to finish the fight. Remember during those days we were doing fifteen rounds. I tell you by the final round I could barely feel my feet. I was wobbly and just not in it. I was like “Kai!I am finished.” He caught me with another punch and I went down. I beat the count ,but Sanchez kept attacking so the referee stopped the fight.

Do you think you really stood a chance against a fighter like him?

I lost that fight because of the short notice.If I had enjoyed a full camp, I would not just have beaten him, I would have knocked him out.

Did you suspect any foul play?

There was no way I was going to win that fight anyway, unless I knocked him out. He was the champion and a great one at that. More title defenses meant good money for him and Don King was protective of that. I said I would be back and returned home.

How did you hook up with Don King?

After the Sanchez fight, he realized that I had immense potential so he signed me and was promoter for most of my fights.

Is he a good person?A lot of fighters don’t say nice things about him

Well,he is a businessman. I remember there was a fight where he said he was going to pay me a certain amount of money. I said no because it was too low and made plans to return to Ghana. He tried bargaining with me, but my mind was made up. So I was in the hotel room packing my stuff to leave when he called again. I answered and said “Hi Don King, this is your African slave, talk to me.”

He was shocked and cut the line. Within five minutes he had arrived at the hotel and was trying to cozy up to me and saying nice things. He was used to dealing with my managers all the time prior to that encounter and he normally had his way when it came to money. From that day he changed and was fair with me.

The Wilfredo Gomez fight. How did you get it made?

Two years after the Sanchez fight I was back against Wilfredo Gomez. Almost all the big hitters in the division were avoiding me at the time because of the Sanchez fight. Gomez was supposed to be my opponent much earlier but had been dodging. Once I became the mandatory, however, that changed. He had no choice.You can hold the title and play with it for a while, but eventually you have to defend it properly and that was what happened. There was a purse bid and his side won so the fight was set for Puerto Rico, his hometown. He knew he would get hometown support and other benefits from that move. I trained in Ohio for that fight and I remember at all press engagements, I told reporters “Tell Gomez to train hard because I am coming for the title.”

You are a trash talker aren’t you?

That’s the game. You have to say something for the fight to get attention, but I meant most of the things that I said in the build up to the fight. Whether he trained hard or not I was going to leave with that title.

Were they also up to tricks like you experienced in the Sanchez fight?

Yes.They had tricks too. When I got there they brought some really beautiful women to the hotel and left them at my door. They knocked and my security asked them what was going on .They said they were there for me. I told the security to see them out because I had made no such request.They were eventually moved out by the hotel security. In the dressing room prior to the fight as well, they put this huge air conditioner in. This is where I was supposed to keep warm before the fight. We could not even figure out how to turn it off so my manager asked for them to do it for us. It became a scuffle and my manager was stabbed in the ensuing melee. It was really terrible.Blood all over. They just wanted to frustrate us but once I got into the ring,it was behind me.

I watched that fight recently. You were losing.

I was not losing the fight, but if I had allowed it to get to the cards for a decision, I was going to lose. I was sure I was going to knock him out be it in the first round or the last. I had made up my mind that if the fight ended without that outcome, I was not even going to stay in the ring for the announcement of the decision. When we started the fight, I just put pressure on him. He threw a lot of punches. Some landed,some did not.I was also hitting him during that process and he got weary. At a point I could just feel his legs were gone and I knew my moment had come. In the tenth round, Amarkai Amartefio, who was minister of sports at the time came to my corner and said in Ga “push him down”.

He had barely turned to return to his seat when I landed the punch that ended the fight.He raced into the ring and came to carry me .That is what i was looking for. To become a world champion. When I won that fight I said to myself, it was open season on all challengers.

Being a champion changed your mentality?

I tell people that when you are a champion you train like a challenger. When I became champion, my training regimen became even more difficult. I became the guy nobody wanted to fight. Don King could not get me a fight.

Ghanaians lived through you as champion. Did that make you feel pressured anytime you mounted the ring?

No, I didn’t feel pressure. I wanted to continue making them happy and so it rather motivated me.

Tell about your relationship with Jerry John Rawlings. The two of you are as thick as thieves.

When I was an amateur fighter he was taking care of us. We were supposed to take part in the world military games at the time. There was a guy in the military. He was American and was unbeaten. He had defeated every challenger that had come his way during other editions of the games. Rawlings realized I could beat that guy. We trained at the Volunteer Force and he was there every day helping us. Even after training, he would sometimes sweep the gym for us and clean all the rooms. He would also go find us food. He is an incredible person.He always looked out for our interests. We became friends that way.

Did he go with you to the games?

No. Went with other officers, but he was right. I won.

Why did you dislike Barry McGuigan so much? You taunted him a lot in some of your post fight interviews

I called him “The Girl”. He was a dangerous boxer just like me and I wanted to fight him so we could settle the debate about who was a better champion. He was speedy and could throw a lot of punches which made him a perfect type of opponent for me. He was an excellent candidate for a knock out.

But you were quite mean to him.

That is the name of the game. You have to talk and whet the appetite of the audience until the fight is made. Too bad his people were afraid and did not make the fight happen.

Why did you fight Whittaker? He was the best defensive boxer the world had seen.

I wanted to take the featherweight title, then super featherweight then lightweight.I had beaten everyone in the two featherweight divisions so moving up to lightweight made sense.

What happened?

He was awkward to fight, but I was also not focused. I had a lot going on in my life then. After I lost I admitted he was the better fighter that day and asked for a rematch. He declined, saying only a fool would give me a rematch.He never did .

Your trainer for a long period of your success was Buffalo Martin.What was he like?

I met him in America in Don King’s camp and came to love that guy. He was a trainer, but our relationship was a bit unique. The way I had been brought up in the sport, it was difficult for somebody to tell me what to do. If you are my trainer, I dictate the pace and you meet me halfway. He had a really good personality and was always happy. It was very infectious and good to have that in camp. We were together for years.

How did he die? Were you ever told?

That was a tragedy. He had this condition where as soon as he sat down, he would start sleeping. He bought a Mercedes Benz in Spain and I later heard he had a collision that led to his death. May his soul rest in peace.

There are opinions that his death took away a lot of your drive to fight.

It’s not really true his death took something away from my career. I felt a lot of pain with his passing because he was my very good friend. I would not be able to laugh at his jokes and other games again, but I still won some fights after his demise.

The Gennaro Hernandez fight was controversial. In your opinion, what happened?

It was a fight i took. There was nothing difficult about that fight. He is a fighter like me, but like I already told you boxing is a mafia kind of business.They had wanted to take the title away from me for years. I was an African holding on to a belt for many years. They needed to make money with the title and that wasn’t going to happen easily with me beating challengers.

What was your plan for the fight?

I had a perfect strategy for the fight. As the fight wore on, it got to where I had planned to take him out and I executed on cue. But the decision was that I had hit him after the bell sounded to end the round. He went down and didn’t want to get up. He rested for almost ten minutes because of that incident.He got back up and I could not really pressure him again before the fight ended. They gave him the victory. I said ok ,take the fight. I am never worried about losing a fight. There is always another time.

There was word of a potential fight against a young Mayweather then. Is it true?

I was not challenging anybody but for me if you operated in my division you were fair game. I never turned down a request for a fight. If that fight had been made, it would have been good.

Why this attitude of not avoiding fighters? Is it not part of the game?

It never mattered to me who was available. You can do all the trash talking you want, but once we get into the ring you have to account for all the words you used. I remember I fought this guy. He had fought Julio Cesar Chavez and went the distance so he was feeling cocky. During the press conference, he was saying a lot of things. Talking trash about how he had been robbed against Chavez and how I was a nobody. Reporters asked me how I felt and I told them it was all good since he was enjoying the fresh air but I warned him not to forget all the things he had said once we got into the ring .

I knocked him out in the tenth round.

Once your career ended you ventured into training for a while. What was that like?

I was training some of the up and coming guys around, but the dark side of the business also caught up. Once they got to a certain level, people started approaching them with all kinds of proposals and filling their heads with thoughts about how they were better than they actually were. I had this guy who was sent to America like that. Unprepared. He fought twice for some titles and lost them all because the lessons were not complete. He wasn’t the only one.He apologized after all that, but its ok.

Do you see any Ghanaian fighters with the potential to reach your caliber?

My caliber of boxer will be hard to find. Not because I’m a better fighter but because I have the holy spirit with me all the time. People say I used juju and all that. I just had God. Boxing has all kinds of things. You can be in the ring and you cannot even see the opponent. You need somebody who has seen it before .You cannot be champion as long as I was without the holy spirit behind you and it does not come easy. You have to be humble and know God as well as do good things with your life.

The young ones have talent, but it’s never just about talent. Its about yourself and how you are going to live. Without preparation, the talent is not going to work. You need to love what you are doing. How can you love something and not work at it? This generation is something else in that regard.

Your son is a fighter.

My son loves the sport but I cannot push him. If he wants to do it to the highest level, I am there to support and guide him.

Which is your favourite fight?

Azabache Martinez. It’s because he was a good fighter who hit hard. He was a thinker in the ring and the fight was really tight.Very back and forth. When he threw and I blocked ,it felt like I had been hit with iron. He had me thinking a lot and what folks don’t know is that it gets tiring very quickly when a fight gets mental. I kept hoping he would not land a shot to the jaw.

Bad opponents?

I never had an opponent whom I considered bad for me. Boxing has a huge element of luck so I would say lucky opponent. In that regard, I would name Pat Caldwell. I knocked him out in round one . He fought Sanchez and went fifteen rounds and lost on points. I also lost to Sanchez.He made a tactical mistake, though during the fight. When we entered the ring, I put pressure on him because I expected him to run around and use his greater reach to trouble me. To my shock, he was willing to stand and trade blows.

I said to myself “Why is this guy making this kind of mistake and fighting me up front?” I threw an upper cut and that was it. You cannot fight me like that.Let the people enjoy the fight

Name three boxers you consider as your favourites

Sugar Ray Leonard.

Jesse Joe Walcott. I loved the way he fought. I watched several tapes of him as a young fighter.

Marvin Hagler. I love my punchers as you can see.

Thank you champ