Ghana’s boxing legend Azumah Nelson has tagged budding boxing talents in the country as very disloyal and unfaithful, thus his unwillingness to take a front row in the quest to produce the next generation of boxing champions.
“I want to help produce some of the Ghanaian boxers to become world Champions but they are not faithful. I trained somebody and he became a commonwealth champion and then some people went around me and told the boxer that because I was a world champion in the past I don’t want to see any other Ghanaian become a world champion. They promised the boxer (name withheld) that they were going to send him to America. He went there and fought three fights. I was asked if he could be a world champion and I said no because I hadn’t finished teaching him what I was supposed to teach him.”
The ‘Professor’ made these remarks while speaking to Errol Barnett of CNN at his residence in Accra.
Ghana has been waiting for a lasting world champion for some time now since Joseph Agbeko and Joshua Clottey lost their titles a few years ago. There are concerns that the beautiful sport of boxing is on the decline in
Ghana but Azumah Nelson believes the right things are not being done to harness the abundant talents available.
A former three-time world champion, Nelson is often described as the best boxer to have come out of the African continent.
His daring feats inside the four corners of the ring made him a national hero in the West African country, while in 2004 "The Professor" became the first African to be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame.