The famous Azumah Nelson, according to Ghanaian fighter Joseph Agbeko, is the finest boxer he has ever seen.
Azumah, according to Agbeko, was the driving force behind his decision to pursue a career in boxing.
Azumah Nelson, a two-weight world champion who won the WBC featherweight belt from 1984 to 1987 and the WBC super-featherweight title twice between 1988 and 1997, is, in his opinion, the finest African boxer ever.
Joseph Agbeko, speaking on an Accra based-FM station, on Monday, April 11, 2022, Agbeko said: “The greatest boxer I’ve ever watched is the professor Azumah Nelson; he’s too much for boxing, he’s the best Africa can ever produce. We the boxers of today cannot fight like him.
“I wonder if we will ever produce another Azumah Nelson because he puts in his heart, he puts in everything and he’s always a warrior inside there [the ring],” He added.
Agbeko Explaining his reason for naming Azumah Nelson as the greatest boxer the continent has ever produced, said: “You can watch Azumah going through a very tough fight, you can see this opponent is very tough for Azumah but when he goes to the corner and sits down, he can tell the cornermen, ‘I’m going to end it in the next round’…but when you’re going through a tough fight, you don’t even know your fate of winning the fight not to talk of stopping the person but Azumah can say, ‘the next round, I’m going to knock him down,’ and he’ll enter there [the ring] and he knows just what to do, he’ll do it easily and he’ll knock out the opponent and this makes him too special.”
Agbeko added that Azumah Nelson, therefore, “is one of the reasons I started boxing because I used to watch him when I was a kid, so he’s the first reason I entered into boxing…”.
Agbeko, nicknamed “King Kong” is himself a two-time former bantamweight world champion, having held the IBF title twice between 2007 and 2011.
He also held the Commonwealth bantamweight championship from 2004 to 2006, the IBO bantamweight title in 2013, and a super bantamweight world title bid in 2013.