Twenty years ago today, Britain’s Johnny Nelson walked to a boxing ring in Italy and finally felt at home.

Even though the atmosphere was hostile, and he heard boos, nothing mattered to Nelson, the visiting champion, that night. All that really mattered was that he was 38 years of age, 13 defences into his reign, and at last feeling good about himself. This was, he said, the best he had ever felt walking to a boxing ring. It was, he said, a turning point. 

It was also the last fight of his career. 

“It was the best time ever,” Nelson said, 20 years after that WBO cruiserweight title fight against Vincenzo Cantatore. “I was walking out, smiling to myself, saying, ‘God, I love this sport. I love my job.’ I’d never said that to myself before. 

“I remember the boos of the crowd, but the booing helped me. I liked it. I could handle it. I’m like, You don’t understand how great this is for me. I was comfortable in it that night, whereas in the past it might have been intimidating. I enjoyed every second of it. 

“I got in the ring, did the splits, and I remember him [Cantatore] looking at me as if to say, ‘What the hell are you doing?’ The looks on the others’ faces said: ‘Is he going to be able to get back up again?’ I did think when I was down there, Oh shit, can I still do this? You better style it out, son.”

To some extent the emotions Johnny Nelson felt that night in Rome can be considered bittersweet. No-one, after all, wants to quit while they are ahead, or, more accurately, at the point at which they have started to love something they once found hard to love. 

Then again, given that so many careers end with a fighter feeling awful before (and during) their final fight, it is preferable to finish strong, as Nelson did. Even better if you can finish happy.

“When I first started, I hated it [boxing],” he said. “I can remember getting into the dressing room and thinking, Why am I doing this? That’s why on the last day it was such a surprise when I thought to myself, I love this. 

“Now, looking back at it, maybe that was my body telling me, ‘This is going to be the last time, son, so you better enjoy it.’ It was the most enjoyable time I’d ever had in the ring. It beat winning the world title, the lot. I went out there and loved it at last. 

“And that was me.”

When one recalls how Nelson’s career started, it should come as no surprise that it ended on a comparatively positive note. Remember that to begin his career Nelson, from Sheffield, suffered three consecutive losses, all within seven months in 1986, and few who would have watched Nelson back then would have predicted that he would continue to fight for almost 20 years, much less one day win a world title. 

However, Nelson, who trained with Brendan Ingle at the Wincobank, was nothing if not persistent. Indeed, it wasn’t long before he started to win fights, picked up a British cruiserweight title, and got his first world title shot: a WBC title challenge against Carlos De Leon in 1990. That fight, infamous for its lack of action, was both premature and pivotal in terms of Nelson’s overall development. 

“I actually got a world title fight after five years of boxing,” he said of that draw with De Leon. “I had 13 amateur fights, 20 professional fights – losing my first three on the trot – and then I boxed for a world title. It was five years in total, amateur and professional, and I drew – even though the fight stunk. I beat myself up about that initially but then I thought, Why are you reacting like that? I was still a boy. I had no experience and I drew.”

Later that same year Nelson regrouped to win a European title, stopping the unbeaten Markus Bott in the final round of a fight in Germany. A defence then followed, against Yves Monsieur, and soon Nelson was back challenging for a world title, this time against James Warring, the IBF champion from America. As before, though, Nelson fell short, losing by decision, and this triggered another run of setbacks: three of them on the spin, mirroring the start of Nelson’s pro career. 

In fact, it wasn’t until 1999 that Nelson’s career, and life as a world champion, really kicked into gear. That was the year Nelson stopped his British rival Carl Thompson in the fifth round, controversially, to win the WBO title he would never actually lose. Better still, Nelson would, after winning that belt, never lose another fight in a professional boxing ring, ensuring the finish to his career was every bit as unique as the start. The key difference, when comparing the two, was that whereas Nelson began his career on three defeats, he was somehow able to then conclude it with a run of 21 straight wins. 

Of all those wins, perhaps the most enjoyable was the last – against Cantatore in Italy. The most important, however, was the one to follow: the fight to both retire and then stay retired. 

“That was always my intention [to retire on top],” Nelson said. “Lennox Lewis did it, and regardless of all the pressure they put him under to come back and fight, he quit and stayed quit. That was the same with me. I wanted to walk away from the game on my own terms rather than have the game walk away from me. It was my choice. I had injuries and my body said, ‘No Johnny, come on, this is a conversation we need to have.’ I didn’t want the game to finish me. It’s then it can affect the memory of what you did in the sport.”

Being only human, Nelson was, despite his foresight, still in danger of overstaying his welcome. This he almost did, too, when in 2006 he agreed to fight Enzo Maccarinelli, the fast-rising Welshman who rather fancied the idea of taking Nelson’s WBO belt. But then, as it is apt to do, Nelson’s body kindly reminded him of what the fighter himself already suspected. 

“I snapped my patella tendon in training,” he recalled. “It was the last week of sparring and my body just gave up on me. 

“I’m glad it happened in training rather than in a fight. I still tried to fight on, thinking I’d be able to fight again in six months, but I knew the year before that the time was up. I thought I’d do the Maccarinelli fight and then announce my retirement. That was always my plan. I was no longer feeling guilty about missing a run at three o’clock in the morning. That means it is time to go. I was getting complacent, so that was my intention – to retire after the fight. But fate had another plan.”

The plan was retirement – not later, or tomorrow, but now. Now the battle for Nelson was not with the body but the mind. 

“I needed to grow up,” he said. “I had to be an adult and have the responsibilities of an adult. I had to do the things that adults do. I had no idea back then. I was like a school leaver – a 38-year-old school leaver. There was a lot of pressure. It was a big change. I suppose it’s a bit like the end of a relationship. You don’t know what the future holds and you don’t know how you are going to cope with this new version of your life. It’s just hard. I had absolutely no ideas. But I knew this – meaning boxing – wasn’t going to last forever.”

The key to Nelson surviving and indeed thriving in retirement has had a lot to do with humility. Humility, after all, becomes a vital component whenever a fighter begins the transition from active to inactive. It is something a fighter will experience in their career only when they suffer defeat and it is something they then need in spades when the lights go out, people move away, and their phone stops ringing. It is at that point humility becomes their greatest weapon. 

“All the way through my career I suffered from imposter syndrome, so even though I had retired, it wasn’t like I ever felt like I belonged in the boxing game anyway,” Nelson said. “Even now, when I’m around champions, people who represented their country, I’m like, My God, these guys are different. I never did that [represent his country as an amateur], so I don’t feel like I belong at the table. When I finished boxing, even though I missed it, it wasn’t like someone had chopped my arm off. It just felt like a change to me. Nothing more than that. 

“Also, I identified as Johnny, not ‘Johnny Nelson the boxer’. Even today I am shocked whenever I am walking through London and people say, ‘Johnny Nelson! How’s it going?’ I still think, How do you know who I am? It baffles me. I’m grateful for it, of course, but I still can’t get my head around how that works.”

In most fighters’ early retirement there comes a tipping point, or the last chance. This is the age at which they can conceivably return to the ring for one last hurrah – usually around the age of 40 – and this door they must keep closed if they are to stay true to their word. It creates, for so many, a second period of mourning. Once it has passed, they know that it is final. 

“There was one offer later, for a fight against Marco Huck,” said Nelson, 45-12-2 (29 KOs). “I didn’t want to come back and start a career again; it was just to fight him in that one fight. It was just to stop him getting to defence number 13 [of his WBO cruiserweight title]. There was talk, but the promoters didn’t go for it in the end. I’m glad they didn’t, to be honest with you. I might have been drawn back into it. It’s never easy just stopping at one.”

After that momentary wobble, Nelson was again steady. By then he had regained his footing and he had found a new identity as a respected boxing pundit on Sky Sports. It was in this role Nelson was able to stay close to the sport and retain some of what many boxers lose when they distance themselves from it entirely. In other words, for as long as he was around the ring, people still recognised him. People still reminded him that he was once a boxer. A world champion, no less. 

“They were like training wheels,” he said of the TV work. “I’m glad I was still involved. I think if it was a complete cutoff, I would have really suffered. Staying close to it just helped me make that transition – from being a fighter to seeing it from a different point of view. It allowed me to see the same sport, my sport, from the point of view of the fans and the broadcasters. It actually helped me understand the sport a little bit better.”

Yet true understanding would only come with distance and time, as is often the case in life. Here, in Nelson’s case, he didn’t properly appreciate what he had until he no longer had it. He also didn’t grasp the depth of his love for the sport until it was too late. 

“I missed the camaraderie in the gym and seeing Brendan [Ingle] every day,” he said. “That was like the breakup of a relationship. 

“I missed having that common goal with everybody in the gym – we were all there preparing ourselves for something that we knew was going to be really hard. That’s what I miss more than anything else. 

“Now and again you also miss having to get yourself in that kamikaze mindset. It was a lot like being in the army, I suppose. Something was missing but I couldn’t figure out what. 

“I look back on those days now and think, You know what? They were the best days of my life. Just being in the gym was everything to me. We were like a dysfunctional family. But we then travelled like a pack of wolves outside of it.”

Now, two decades after his own career ended, Johnny Nelson can offer advice on any number of issues pertaining to a boxing career. You can ask him about winning a world title – what it takes, how it feels – and how difficult it is holding on to one for six years, making defence after defence. You can also ask him how it feels to suffer defeat, a few of them in a row, and how it is possible to continue despite that and find motivation among so much negativity. 

Then you have the criticism he faced throughout his career: the accusations of him being boring to watch, or too safety-first and reliant on movement. You can ask him about that, too, and no doubt he will impress you with his humility and his honesty. The same goes for the insight Nelson can offer when discussing his nerves and how for years he was doing something he kind of hated simply because he had committed to it and could think of nothing else to do. 

Yet of all the things a professional boxer might ask a 58-year-old Johnny Nelson, retirement should still be the primary topic of conversation. If they are smart, or have any sense at all, a boxer should be asking Nelson how he knew when the time was right and how he managed to stay retired once the decision had been made. They should be asking for tips, advice, the secret. 

Only they won’t, will they? In fact, one of the reasons why most boxers find retirement so troubling is because while they were still active they had no desire whatsoever to think about it, never mind plan for it. Which is why Nelson, rather than wait to be asked, is these days happy to offer advice unsolicited. 

“I’d say enjoy every day today and stop worrying about tomorrow,” he said. “Also, make the most of it. When it’s gone, it’s gone. 

“Oh, and another thing: regarding the deal we make with the devil – in terms of saying we’d ‘die in here’ before we lose – don’t be so ignorant. I said that once before I fought Carl Thompson and I often think about that, even now. I can’t believe I actually said that. I can’t believe those words actually came out of my mouth. Think about your health, give it all you’ve got, and be honest with yourself – always. If you do that, and are honest with yourself, it’s easier to make the right decision.”