Azumah Nelson reveals conversation with Rawlings that ‘changed his life’

Legendary Ghanaian boxer, Azumah Nelson has revealed how a conversation he had with late Ghana president, Jerry John Rawlings set his career up for stardom.

Nelson narrates that he met Rawlings during his camping at the National boxing Training school.

The former WBC super-featherweight title holder explained that he got into the Ghana Army after he was sneaked into the Army boxing purposefully to defeat a US boxer unstoppable during their games.

In an interview with Angel FM, the Boxing hall of Famer narrated how it all begun.

"When I was a teenage boxer, the Ghana Army used to attend World Military Games. There was this US boxer who always beat everyone every year. Even though I wasn't an army member, the Army drafted me into the Ghana Army Boxing Team for the Games so I could stop the guy.

"Whiles we camped at the National Training School, one young military man would always be cooking yam for us. Times were really hard in Ghana that we struggled to get food to eat. When the military man went out to get the yam, we would usually eat without stew.

This young man will again go in search again. Then he'd come back with beans. He cook and we eat. In the night, we the amateur boxers in camp will be asking ourselves where he got the beans. He never told us."

Azumah continued that Rawlings went ahead to take up all the daily chores to keep him and his colleagues comfortable.

"Early in the morning, whiles we set out for training, he would come to us. By the time we return from training, he'd have cleaned our rooms and mopped the place. We got astonished how a military man could do that.

”When we asked him to leave the cleaning for us, he'd say no. He tells us we are going to serve Ghana so he needed to serve us. These were times that people dreaded an encounter with a military man we were all shocked."

Azumah who is now ranked the 31st greatest pound-for-pound boxer of all time by BoxRec said he once taught of ditching boxing to become a military man but Rawlings told him his greatness lies in boxing.

"One day, I approached him and suggested to him that I wanted to join the army. He looked me in the face and said no. He told me the spirit in me is beyond the military so I should stick to boxing because that's where my greatness will come from. I heeded to his advice.

Years later, I came to learn that he had been going to the Osu Castle to borrow beans for us on his own accord. We only got to know about this when the debt piled up and he had to go and pay. We were not getting beans again. But he was always with us."

"When we returned from one of our fights abroad, there had been a coup and I realized he was the one who plotted it. He had taken control over the whole country. At that age?

”To be honest I was least surprised. He was so selfless and didn't want people to be cheated. People can have other opinions about him but I got to know him from times he was unknown, and I always felt his desire."

Jerry John Rawlings died in 2020 after a short illness at age 73.