Johnny Nelson on how he learned about ‘Culchies’

Johnny Nelson has revealed Brendan Ingle thought him what a ‘culchie’ was while telling him how you go about beating one in the ring.

The former cruiserweight champion of the world trained under legendary coach Ingle and is one of the famous Wincobank Gym’s greatest success stories.

The Sky pundit is also one of the most vocal advocates of the Dublin trainer and is never shy about sharing an Ingle story.

He shared one such tale with Sports Joe recently, explaining how learned what a ‘culchie’ was and how Ingle thought him how to get one over on one.

“There was this fighter from Leeds called Crawford Ashley. He had an Irish trainer. Sorry I can’t remember the trainer’s name, but Brendan said this trainer is this thing, what we call ‘culchie Irish,’ – I don’t know what that means.

“‘They take no nonsense’, he said. ‘So I want you to do a backflip in the ring, do a shuffle, point to him and he’ll go mad and when he goes mad, he’s going to go mad at his fighter.

“‘They will be so angry at what you’ve done, they’ll take it as a disrespect. He won’t be able to relay any messages to him because he will be that angry at what you’ve done.’

“And so we walked to the stairs to get in the ring. And I’m looking thinking ‘I’m going to look a right idiot here, Bren.’

“He slapped my arse and said ‘get it done’, so I did a front-roll, flipped up, did the shuffle and I then looked at Bren and thought ‘s*** man, you got it right’.”

Nelson went on to win the fight against a fighter who went on to win British, European, and Commonwealth’s titles at light heavyweight titles during a career that included a training stint in Belfast.