IT wasn’t quite Brian Clough telling the 1974 Leeds United squad he had just inherited to “throw their medals in the bin because they were not won fairly” but the sentiment was on similar lines. Billy Nelson, erstwhile boxing coach to world champion Ricky Burns, has now spent six weeks training heavyweight Gary Cornish following the latter’s move from his hometown of Inverness to Glasgow. The picture that has emerged – and one that was enhanced during Cornish’s maiden fight since teaming up with Nelson and management team MTK Scotland last Saturday night – is that there remains plenty of potential in the 29 year-old but that his reputation to date is one that has been built on sand rather than concrete. Cornish’s fight record is an impressive 24 wins and just the one loss – and that to the otherworldly Anthony Joshua - but Nelson feels that doesn’t tell the full story.
“He's got a good record but it's a false record and he knows that now,” said Nelson with typical candour. “Gary has been lacking in confidence. When I'm saying 'this is wrong, this is wrong, this is wrong', I'm doing it from an educational standpoint, so he knows what he needs to do to become a better fighter.
“Gary has been brought up to fight a certain way up north and everything has got to change. He's caught up between styles. It's very much like starting from scratch, taking it back to the basics. It's a learning process; I don't think he realises how he was doing things so wrong. He only ran once a week, now he's running six days a week and he's never been fitter. He needs to do a lot of sparring and work on sharpness in the ring. He's not done a lot of sparring because of the injury he's had.”
Cornish defeated the Pole Kamil Sokolowski on points following their six-round bout in Paisley’s Lagoon Leisure Centre last weekend but Nelson had hoped to see more from his new charge on the night.
“I was expecting a KO [knock-out] as he's been punching hard in the gym. He's had a wee bit of an injury niggle over the last couple of weeks but there's no excuses. We've got a few things to go and work on.
"Gary was the instigator in that fight being scrappy. I'm not going to stand here and tell you it was the other guy - Gary was the spoiler. It's still very much a work in progress. His gym work has improved ten-fold, it's just transferring that into the ring.”
Cornish is expected to go back out again next month before taking on Sam Sexton for the British heavyweight title at a date and venue to be settled in the coming weeks. Nelson hopes the longer he has to prepare his man for that Lonsdale Belt match-up the better.
"If he fights again in March, we'll be looking for a step up again ahead of the British title,” he added. “It really all depends when the purse bids are in and when the fight gets announced. Whenever it is, the longer, the better because it gives me more time to develop him. But I believe he'll win the British title.
“Rome wasn't built in a day - I've only had six weeks with him. There are still technical issues we need to work on; he was very flat-footed [in Saturday’s fight] whereas in the gym he was up on his toes. He's working a lot harder than when he came here but translating that to the ring is a different matter.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here