By Terence Dooley
Billy Nelson guided Coatbridge's Ricky Burns to the WBO super-featherweight title last September by master-minding a thrilling points victory over undefeated Puerto Rican Roman 'Rocky' Martinez, a win that rocked Glasgow's Kelvin Hall to its foundations and gave Scotland its first world title-holder since Scott Harrison. The Glaswegian has had to juggle the responsibility of training fighters whilst holding down a full-time job as a residential social worker. However, the 42-year-old is now in a position to take up coaching on a full-time basis as he seeks to add to Ricky’s WBO success.
“Aye, I've just handed my notice in today to go full-time in boxing, it was just too much. I finish at eight in the morning and I'm back in the gym at half-eleven. Sometimes I just can't get back to sleep again in the day and am back in work at night so I've decided to go full-time with the boxing,” confirmed Nelson when speaking to me over the phone.
“It is nice that my bosses asked me to stay on a part-time basis. I can still keep my eye in so I'm delighted that I can do that. As long as I can have Monday to Friday, that is the main thing. My job involves working with young lads in a secure establishment; it is one step away from a young offenders institute. It is quite tough.”
Nelson learned his trade under Peter Harrison when the Scottish veteran was riding high on the success of his son, former WBO featherweight boss Scott Harrison, and 'Amazing' Alex Arthur. Billy left Peter to take up a role as Scotland Amateur Development Coach; he went onto guide fighters from a rented property in Newarthill. Nelson now works from closer to home; his Stepps-based Fighting Scots gym is right on his doorstep, it opened its doors in 2008.
Billy will be back in the Burns business come March 12th, Joseph Laryea has been named as the title-holder's next opponent; the Ghanaian handed Edinburgh's Paul Appleby a points defeat last December, scotching hopes of an all-Scottish clash between Burns and Appleby. Although Paul boxed badly on the night and was the architect of his own defeat, Nelson is not taking the visitor lightly.
“Laryea's a tall, rangy guy, he's got a good jab but I think he freezes a wee bit when he gets hit so we've been working on that. In regards to his win over Paul Appleby, that was the first time I'd seen the guy. Paul didn't really use his jab but when he did use it he was landing it quite frequently. I don't believe there is a better jab in boxing than Ricky Burns's,” stressed Nelson.
“I think Ricky'll stop him. Appleby froze him with a body shot and I can assure you that Ricky punches a lot harder than Paul. Ricky has been back in the gym for the last two-and-a-half weeks. We've done a couple of spars, we will spar him tomorrow [last Wednesday], Friday and give him a week off the sparring before bringing in Derry Matthews. Derry is a very good fighter, he's got a very, very good guard and that is important, he's quite tall as well too boot.”
Burns out-pointed Andreas Evensen in his maiden defence, it was a competent if forced performance from the reigning champion that left many hoping it was a case of the calm before the unification title storms. The announcement of Laryea as an opponent suggests that Ricky will have to retain his focus and resist the temptation to look ahead to potential unification fights against the likes of IBF holder Mzonke Fana and Japan's WBA boss Takashi Uchiyama lest he slip up against the 14-4 (11 early) fighter.
“No, Ricky is a very amiable guy, he's not big-headed whatsoever, so we had no problems. Ricky is very focussed and hasn't changed a bit,” answered Nelson when asked if Ricky had lost any of his focus since winning the WBO title.
“I don't think there are many fighters in the world who can produce that Martinez type of performance time after time. The Evensen fight was a bit of an anti-climax but I'm sure that Ricky can put in a really scintillating performance against Laryea, he had a good break over Christmas and he will move onto much, much bigger fights.”
Burns joined Billy in 2007; Nelson laid down the blueprint for success; Ricky put in the hours required to make their plans a reality; the trainer feels that the Martinez fight allowed his charge to show the world that he has the skill, heart and grit necessary to maintain at the top-level.
“The bigger the fight the bigger the performance from Ricky. When Ricky came to me he had been beaten by [then-British champion Carl] Johanneson and he was with his amateur trainer, who is a great trainer but he's an amateur trainer all the same. Ricky's manager asked me to look at him and I thought that it was really important for him to be in a gym where he was surrounded by professional fighters. I sat him down and explained that he needed to change his style, his skills were fine, the boxing ability was good but I told him that the style he had wouldn't win titles. I told him what I expected from him and how we'd go about it.”
He added: “We had a five-year plan and that is exactly how it transpired, he just got better and better, his form has been superlative and he's dropping guys left, right and centre in sparring. Ricky also took some shots off Martinez and I can assure you that Martinez can whack, he hit Ricky with two shots in the middle of the fight and Ricky said it felt like someone had jumped from the ring ropes and gave him a bang on his head!”
Burns told me that Martinez landed a left hook that counts amongst the hardest shots the boxer has taken in his 32-fight career (30 losses against two defeats with seven stoppages). Roman also signalled his intent early in the fight, flooring his challenger with a right hand towards the end of round one.
“That shot was a cracking shot, right on the money, it is the most susceptible round to be put down in but the main thing is that you get up,” mused Nelson when recalling that first-round lapse.
“Ricky came to me at the end of the round and I told him he'd won the round apart from that one punch and now we were two points behind, which is a bit is a bit unfair because a guy can win the round then go down from one punch and the other guy gets a two-round advantage – I don't agree with that. If you win the round but get floored like that then it should be an even round. That's just my opinion. Why give away two-rounds on a one-second lapse when you've won the previous two-minutes and fifty-seconds?
“Ricky absolutely boxed the head off him rounds two and three, then in round eleven he was fantastic. I'd rather have a guy go out and use his head when he knows he's winning a fight but not go on the back-foot and let the guy come at you because all it takes is one punch. You have to match fire with fire, Ricky did that in the twelfth, where he hurt Martinez to the body. The doctor in the Martinez corner could speak Portuguese and Martinez apparently came to the corner in the middle rounds and said he didn't know what to do with Ricky.”
Team Martinez have blamed the rigours of weight-making, claiming that their guy was dramatically weakened going into the contest. Nelson disagrees pointing out that the champion landed a number of solid, meaty shots during the middle rounds enough, perhaps, to suggest that he still had some pep in his punches.
“I've not read anything about it but I can assure you that his weight was fine on the check weigh-in before the fight. See the left hook that hit Ricky in the middle rounds? That would have knocked anyone out. Ricky has got a fantastic chin because his conditioning is brilliant,” scoffed Nelson in response to Martinez's claims.
It has not been all chitlins and gravy for the Scottish sage. Nelson has a single title reverse in the 'L' column, Willie Limond's 2007 eighth-round corner retirement defeat to Amir Khan for the Commonwealth lightweight title. Willie floored Khan at 2:04 of round six; the Glasgow-based boxer had gradually brought his right hand into play, touching Amir to the body to create the gaps needed to thread home rights to the chin.
“Well, you tell me yours, and be honest,” asks Nelson when asked for his take on the Khan knockdown.
The right hand that floored the Bolton youngster created a lot of controversy as Khan lost his composure after hitting the deck, rising at five before dropping back down to one knee as the toll hit eight and then quickly rising again. In total, Amir was the beneficiary of an eleven-second count.
Nelson took it up for me. “I'll tell you what the problem was on that night, Willie got a perforated ear-drum and that affected his performance and balance. But he still did enough to hurt Khan. The count was up to twelve seconds long. If it goes to eight and the referee allows Khan to go down and then get back up at nine. You shouldn't do that. It is not eight, nine, ten and out. It is eight, nine and out. When he went down on his haunches the referee [Marcus McDonnell] should have continued to count him out.”
Fighters clambering to their feet as the toll hits ten is a staple of Hollywood's version of boxing, in reality the rules state that if you are not on your feet by eight then you are counted out in the act of rising for a technical count out.
In spite of, or perhaps because of, the performance against Amir, Willie has been left out in the cold. John Watson and Anthony Crolla are meeting for the Lonsdale belt vacated by Gavin Rees, another snub for Willie, who lost to Erik Morales via sixth-round stoppage in September of last year.
Nelson, though, has recently added the British featherweight title to his gym's trophy cabinet after John Simpson's away win over Belfast's Martin Lindsay. Simpson had worked with Nelson before and decided to go with Billy full-time ahead of the Lindsay fight. Nelson's other fighters, Commonwealth Games semi-finalist Stephen Simmons, Michael Roberts (2-0 featherweight prospect), David Brophy (set to make his début on February 25th) and Santino Caruana (6-1), are also waiting in the wings. Billy believes that his books are perfectly balanced at the moment.
“The young guys work every bit as hard as the experienced guys. If you don't put anything in then you won't get the results out. Simmons is a big man with fast hands and fast feet; he's got so much ability. There's a few faults that we're working on but he's going to be class,” he predicted.
Tweaking a fighter's technique is fraught with difficulty; Nelson advocates a patient approach, believing that you should use the early days of a pro career to iron out the technical flaws.
“We don't over-load them because their amateur days are completely different. We work on one thing at a time – Rome wasn't built in a day. They've got a long professional career and we work on things fight-by-fight in the early days of the pro career. You're still learning for the first two-and-a-half years,” he opined. There is, however, one golden rule.
“Everyone has got to get that degree of tuition and I wouldn't spend forty-five minutes with Ricky and only twenty with another guy. Each guy gets the quality of time because the guys who are just starting out are tomorrow's champions.”
Please send news and views to neckodeemus@hotmail.co.uk