Glyn Leach wrote:Stand By Your Man - dedicated to Adam Smith
Should say, I rated him very highly as a fighter and was disappointed/disgusted by his early world title losses, as I'm sure he is. Those performances did not reflect the man's ability at all, but were part of his nature, as witnessed by the stinker vs Akinwande at York Hall. As his self belief grew though, Johnny became a phenomenal craftsman, a fighter nobody could do anything at all with, he was always in charge. I like the man, but he let himself down badly when him and Brendan crashed Carl Thompson's post-fight interview, that was just classless. Overall though, good memories with a scattering of terrible ones within.
Excellent post, you should write columns for a paper or magazine!
I'm a little more "sceptical" shall we say of Johnny's performances as a champion. I remember he had one or two problems vs Sellars and Dominguez (I think) on top of the Jones one, I didn't like his post fight interviews in these fight. I didn't for one minute belief it was tactical and part of a master plan and always under control. Dominguez gassed for me, Sellars got caught and well.... he lost against Jones, and lost big also. He didn't give these opponents the credit they deserved it was like "so I lost a couple of rounds, I was in control, knew it was going to happen, just took my time etc".
Sometimes he would look electric, I thought after the Thompson fight "wow, its clicking now for Johnny" - and there were some good nights for him.... Looked the biz against Rudiger May and out in Italy for his final defence, nice to get redemption as it was his first fight on a terrestial network since those dark dark days... but sadly, most of his opponents in these world title fights remind me P4P of the guys Ricky Burns has been defending against - substandard in essence.
I feel he had the talent to Unify, just a shame it never even looked close to happening.