How good was Johnny Nelson?

You heard the saying 'if at first you don't succeed try, try again'.

 

he was skillful, but god damn was he boring. Adam Smith gives him a bit of jib on a regular basis because of it.

he won 13 World Championship fights, but didn't get big crowds or anything. plus, the opponents were mostly crud.

the last handful of his fights were in Europe due to not selling well in the UK.

 

The guys in the classic forum might know more about him if you want to ask there.

 

He was decent. He had talent being tall, very rangy, decent hand speed. He was agile, very elusive but also very boring.

His first shot at a title against Carlos De Leon was a disgraceful performance, he literally ran around the ring barely throwing a punch and when he did throw fell short 90% of the time. He totally choked and the fight ended in a draw as De Leon couldn't hit him and Nelson refused to engage. You'd get more action in 2-3 rounds of a Wlad or Ottke fight than that whole fight. That poor performance had many people right him off for a long time.

But as Nelson matured he got better. When he was champion I believed he would have given any of the other champions a tough fight and even possibly beat some of them. Overall a decent fighter but he was far from great.

 

Aye shame the Enzo mac fight never happened cause of injury

 

He was a very good fighter. Very patient, calm and composed with good ability but yeah it did = boring in many of his fights.

 

So that's what? 12 cruiserweight defenses? Thats more than Holyfield and David Haye combined! Any one that remotely famous amongst those defenses?

Hit and run boxer or power puncher?

 

boring, safety first cruiser - sums up johnny's career....

 

Can you blame the guy? He had already lost 11 fights. It was probably do or die.

 

i dunno...one would think with 11 losses...it might be time to go for broke? do or die?

you say "do or die" then say you cant blame him for being safety first?...you sound like a ******* in training

 

Made a great comback in his career after an awful start.

At one point he was 25-12

 

yeah definitely matured late on. Didn't help going up a weight.

 

Not very good to be honest

One of the lesser fighters to ever win a world title

I would compare him to someone of the level of Cloud