Johnny Nelson Discusses His Experiences Abroad, More

By Shaun Brown

It’s 1990 and Johnny Nelson strolls in at 5am one morning after a night out in Sheffield with his wife. Five hours later he’s on a flight to Berlin about to be used as live bait for the best that German boxing has to offer.

“I got to Berlin and I was driven directly to the gym,” Nelson recalled when speaking to BoxingScene.com about jetting abroad for some sparring sessions.

“They then tell me ‘You’re sparring.’ I was in deep water, like I was drowning. I ended up sparring four rounds with [Henry] Maske, [Axel] Schulz and [Torsten] May.”

28-miles divided neighbouring East and West Germany until the Berlin wall was pulled down in November 1989 amidst jubilant scenes. Jubilation could hardly be the word used to describe Nelson’s career when he touched down in the fatherland.  At 23-years-old he had won and defended the British cruiserweight title with ease, then came the night that his own wall came close to crumbling down around him as he challenged for the WBC world title against Carlos De Leon in front of his fellow Steel City men and women.

“The fight with De Leon was the turning point,” he remarked on their bore draw.

“It was a confidence thing with me. I had to go abroad by myself. It was going to either make me or break me. On Brendan Ingle’s [his trainer] part it was a stroke of genius. I dreaded it, I hated it but I knew I had to do it. He told me – ‘You’ll soon realise how good you are’.”

After the negativity that surrounded his performance against De Leon, getting away to Germany would turn this “mother’s boy”, as Ingle once called him, into a world champion. His first and everlasting impressions of what would become familiar surroundings to him did nothing to put a smile on his face.

“It was unbelievably depressing, the gym was grey and you knew instantly you were on the outside. You weren’t one of the chosen few (laughing). Brendan knew I wasn’t the finished article mentally or emotionally. I just thought I was lucky. I just thought the opposition wasn’t very good,” Nelson confessed.

“When I was there I was lonely every night. Every night was like preparing for a fight the next day. You’re scared, you’re nervous, you’re angry – all the emotions you get before a fight. The stubborn side of me is telling me you’re not going home. The weak side of me is saying go home, you don’t need this. To be honest I actually wanted to be a policeman.”

Even to this day there are tales of challengers and sparring partners from foreign shores being easily acclimatised to what their hosts put on for them. There are now countless examples of American challengers to the big and bigger Klitschko heavyweight stranglehold that have bitten the dust as soon as they step off the plane. They are whisked off to lavish hotels, given ‘treats’ and a free hand at the bar and room service. Nelson was keen never to be a part of such mind games.

“Even back then they tried to dominate your mind. If you control the mind, you control the engine. They want you in a state so you look up to them so that you don’t expect yourself to win. That’s what I found when they spoke to me, when they trained, when they stood next to me, they’ve got to make you doubt yourself.”

“The hotel that I stayed at closed at weekends. The manager told me that Henry Maske’s trainer asked her what I was doing at night. I didn’t drink beer. I didn’t eat beef. I just drank multi-vitamin drinks and ate normally. Maske’s trainer told her to give me beef and give me beer thinking I’d take it and lap it up but I wasn’t gonna do it.”

In time it became clear to not only Nelson but also his German counterparts that he was there to embarrass them and not the other way round. Just as the Brit was about to confirm to himself and to his trainer how good he was in the ring, he was also prepared to risk further German wrath and a hasty exit whilst out for a run with Henry Maske – a then esteemed member of their boxing royalty.

“The sparring got very competitive with me and Maske. He was a phenomenal runner too. I went on a 10k run with him once and all the time I just stuck on his shoulder. He was trying to shake me all the time but I just stuck with him. And just was we got to the end I took off and left him. He was livid! He even kicked the crap out of this Audi car that was waiting to take him back.”

With Nelson now off the Christmas card list of Maske and his trainer he was making enemies quicker than he could say ‘Auf Wiedersehen’.

And in 1995 as Axel Schulz was training to dethrone legendary George Foreman, who was playing Grandfather to the heavyweight division as a world champion, Nelson put another one of his spanners in the works during one of their sparring encounters.

“I gave him a black eye ten days before his fight with Foreman, I put him in a right state,” said Nelson

Despite the initial hatred of what he was trying to achieve, Nelson knew that Brendan Ingle had made him a man and a world champion without even being there. And as every half-decent fighter these days looks to get fast tracked to instant fame and glory, the now Sky boxing pundit has some tried and tested words of advice.

“These guys that get fast tracked are a short-term solution heading towards a long term problem. One day they’ll come across a guy who has been through all the problems I went through, someone who has experienced the good and the bad. After my time in those grey holes I’d covered every aspect of fighting. It was the best thing I’d ever done by going to Germany.”