By Terry Dooley

Nicky Cook, 29-2 (16), did things the traditional way as a featherweight, winning British, Commonwealth and European titles en route to a vacant WBO world title shot against the American stylist Steve Luevano; Cook came up short in that one, losing by KO in the 11th round, before regrouping at super-feather, where he beat Kirkor Kirkorov and then relieved Alex Arthur of the WBO title.

Nicky, though, was plagued by illness and injury during his world title reign, a proposed voluntary defence against Stephen Foster Junior never came to fruition.  Cook’s first title defence was a mandatory against the undefeated Puerto Rican Roman Martinez last March.  Cook was stopped in the fourth round of that one and has been plagued by persistent back problems ever since.

Cook, who won the WBF Intercontinental super-featherweight title earlier in his career, has been working as a personal trainer since the Martinez reverse.  However, claims that he is considering retirement due to back problems have proven wide of the mark.  Nicky recently went through his paces at the TKO GYM in Tenerife and is planning his return to the ring.

“Instead of sticking to the gameplan [against Martinez], I planted my feet a bit more and walked onto a big shot.  I thought I could have got a voluntary [defence] but had to take my mandatory and that was a bit gutting,” revealed Cook when recalling the Martinez showdown.

Cook withdrew from a proposed fight with Foster due to flu, he believed that, as a world champion, he owed it to the fans to only step into the ring when one hundred fit.  “I thought that as a world champion I shouldn’t get into the ring unless I was fully fit.  I had a virus and then had to go into the Martinez fight,” revealed Cook.

“I had the fight under control.  I hurt him in the second round and if I had more time left in the round I’d have got him out of there.  I then walked onto a classy shot in the fourth and didn’t recover from it,” admitted the 30-year-old Londoner.

Cook had been long-slated to challenge Scott Harrison for the WBO featherweight title only for Scott’s errant ways to scupper the North-South contest, much to Nicky’s chagrin.  Harrison struggled in his contest with Victor Polo; he had also looked uncomfortable when tested to the body by a faded Michael Brodie and Manuel Medina.  Would Cook’s body shots have proven decisive in a fight with the Scot?

“I’m a box-fighter and like to work the body.  Scott was struggling as well at featherweight and at that point I wasn’t as quite as bad when it came to making the weight.  I still had my legs and felt that I’d be able to take it out off Scott’s body at that weight,” predicted Cook, who refused to condemn Scott for letting his life spiral out of control.

“Nah, Scott is his own man and the problems he’s had belong to no one else but him, I was just disappointed that he couldn’t pull himself together for a massive English versus Scottish fight, that is life and that is how it was meant to be,” declared a philosophical Cook.

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