Nelson and Conlan Share the Fight-Day Struggles Crocker Hid Before First Donovan Fight

Billy Nelson finally revealed the full extent of the pre-fight issues Lewis Crocker suffered ahead of his first clash with Paddy Donovan.

Crocker claimed victory via disqualification when they first met in March, but the boxer who went on to win the rematch was open about underperforming.

Although he didn’t look for any excuses, his team did hint at fight day ‘problems’ soon after the bout and throughout the build-up to the world title repeat.

Speaking after the Belfast man won the first all-Irish world title fight to become Ireland’s only reigning male world champion, his trainer Nelson finally lifted the lid on what really went wrong in the lead-up to the original bout.

“The day of the fight Lewis picked up something and it affected his performance massively,” Nelson admitted. “You saw him completely different for the second fight, but that night he just wasn’t himself,” he added before revealing he only found out the full extent of the issue after the first encouther.

“Boxers are very stubborn – they keep things from you, you know what I mean?” he said. “He may have thought, ‘I’ll be alright,’ but clearly he wasn’t gonna be. If I’d known beforehand, the fight probably wouldn’t have gone ahead.”

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Expanding manager Jamie Conlan added: ” He had a bit of an upset tummy. You could just see he wasn’t feeling right. He’s very introverted and keeps things to himself so it was hard to know how bad he was. Because of food poisoning, he crashed the weight badly with a hard cut and wasn’t feeling good on the morning of the weigh-in, which hurt, as he then tried to rehydrate quickly and put food in the system, which didn’t sit right with him.”

Former world title challenger, Conlan, also revealed things were very different in the dressing roon at Windsor Park.