Azumah Nelson

Azumah Nelson, "the Professor", ruled the WBC featherweight division for three years from 1984, then won the super featherweight belt on two separate occasions. He was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2004 and is widely rated among Africa's greatest boxers.

Amateur gold

He was born on 19 July 1958. In 1978 he won featherweight gold at both the All-Africa Games and the Commonwealth Games and was named Ghana's amateur boxer of the year. Early in his pro career he collected the African and then the Commonwealth featherweight belts.

World champion

Little known outside Ghana, he took a short-notice fight against WBC champion Salvador Sánchez at Madison Square Garden on 21 July 1982 and was stopped in the 15th round. On 8 December 1984 in Puerto Rico, trailing on all three cards, he knocked out Wilfredo Gómez in the 11th to become WBC featherweight champion. He won the vacant super featherweight title against Mario Martinez in 1988 and challenged for the WBC and IBF lightweight belts in 1990. He reclaimed the super featherweight title by stopping Gabriel Ruelas in the fifth round on 1 December 1995 and lost it to Genaro Hernández on points in 1997. His career ran from 1979 to 2008.

Honours

A sports complex in Kaneshie, Accra, is named after him, and Ashley Morrison's biography The Professor was published in 2014. BoxRec ranks him among the top 70 pound-for-pound boxers in history.