Thoughts on Clinton Woods - The Biggest British Overachiever of Recent Times?

Just on the off-chance I've recently had a gander at Clinton Woods' autobiography, and it got me pondering a couple of issues and revisiting some of his major fights.

I guess you always need to be careful when you label someone an 'overachiever' as it can sound like you're patronising them. But I don't think that Woods, the self-titled 'Skinny Boy from Sheffield', would mind too much or take it as an insult.

I'm struggling to think of any British fighter in the last twenty-odd years who squeezed more out of himself, relative to early career expectations and talent level, than Woods did. Here's a guy who, having boxed a bit on the amateur scene as a junior, had to quit abruptly at the age of 15 due to becoming a father at this tender age. When he returned to the sport seven years later, jumping straight into the professional scene after his long hiatus without re-entering the amateur ranks, he did so by his own admission simply to "get rid of the beer belly" which had formed. He's also stated that the only ambition he harboured as a professional was to win a Central Area title at some stage, and never saw himself achieving anything beyond that.

He was also prone to severe dips in confidence and self-belief, and on multiple occasions considered packing the sport in before he hit his late-career heights, so disillusioned was he with it all. It's not as if he was a fighter with any 'special effects' or blindingly obvious talent, either. Indeed, while Sheffield has proven itself a tremendous producer of top fighters in recent times, Woods was perhaps outgunned against many of them if you're comparing pure talent: Herol Graham, Naseem Hamed, Ryan Rhodes and Kell Brook to name a few. Yet Hamed aside, he arguably achieved more than any of them.

From losing to an awkward spoiler in David Starie in 1998 and then coming perilously close to being taken out by a journeyman in Sam Leuii in a Commonwealth title defence a year later, he really did have quite the career turnaround over the next seven or eight years. Winning a brawl with the dangerous banger Ole Klemetsen, going 1-1-1 with Glencoffe Johnson (including a tremendous victory in the third of their entertaining fights, when Woods showed fantastic heart to come back from almost being stopped to dig out a big win), twice outscoring the man who dethroned Dariusz Michalczewski, Julio Cesar Gonzalez, in a pair of high-action fights and, of course, producing a career-best showing to upset the odds and stop the previously undefeated Rico Hoye in five rounds to win the IBF Light-Heavyweight title in 2005.

For me Woods is one of the great success stories of British boxing in recent times, and probably deserves a bit more recognition than he receives. If anyone bites there could be some other interesting points to debate here. We'll see....

I took a keen interest in Woods as well.Back when world title holders from these isles weren't ten a penny, it was a pleasant surprise to see him operating at that level for as long as he did.
I only remember the Glengoffe Johnson (sic) fights and they were great achievements in themselves in my opinion as Johnson still had a full tank even though he had been around a fair old while.Glen being of the type such as Thulani Malinga, a weathered old horse who has a brief time in the sun after being a bit of a nearly man- in my opinion gives us a yardstick of where Woods was in the pecking order.
Whilst on the subject of comparisons-Woods does sort of remind me of Dennis Andries.Both had trilogy fights (Jeff Harding again nobody's idea of an all time great but a fierce competitor) and both really should have been more widely appreciated in my opinion!

I remember watching the Rico Hoye fight and thinking that Woods would be cannon fodder and being pleasantly surprised to see Hoye out of his depth.

I always liked Woods - he was never going to be a unified World Champ, but the fact is he picked up a belt and defended it more than a few times against half decent opposition - the fights Chris mentioned above against Gonzales being a case in point.

Clinton was never likely to win against fighters such as Jones and Tarver as he didn't have the skillset, but he had a good chin and towards the tail-end of his career he showed the guts and determination that was perhaps lacking in the early stages. He certainly overachieved by his own standards, and rightfully winning and defending a world strap a few times is not to be sniffed at.

I think he sits in the Steve Robinson category as someone who nobody expected would win a world title, but he did it in style and didn't meekly surrender in their next defence. He can be rightfully proud of what he's achieved.

Well Steve Robinson edges him in opponents, he had a great streak over admittedly Britsh WBO fodder such as Hodgkinson McMillan and Duke "It's worse than that,I'm gone,Jim!" McKenzie.

Thanks for the replies, fellas.

@Derek Smalls, yeah if I was extending this beyond the last twenty years to something like thirty-five, then Andries would have to come into consideration and might even have pipped Woods to the tag of biggest overachiever. Woods never had any special effects as a fighter, but always did the basics pretty well and had decent fundamentals. Andries didn't even have that at the beginning!

Love that series with Harding - as you say, some similarities there with Woods' trilogy against Johnson - but I always say that the punch Andries knocked Harding out with in their second fight must be the most technically incorrect and wild, swinging shot to ever produce a knockout, especially at world level! I've seen drunkards in the pub throwing more technically sound punches than that....But hey, it worked! Andries didn't have much base talent, but he was a tryer and as tough as they come.

@Mr Bounce, oddly enough I don't think Woods at his best beating Tarver is all that far fetched. Tarver was a good fighter, but one whose reputation was boosted out of proportion by him being the guy who caught Roy at just the right time. He looked like an unremarkable arm puncher in his very next fight against Johnson, which he lost, and definitely not this daring knockout puncher which the Jones result conned a lot of people into thinking he was. He was quite a cagey operator who didn't like exchanging at close quarters if he could avoid it and took a lot of breathers in fights.

I think the Woods of the Hoye or third Johnson fight could have pulled it off against Tarver, or at the very least made a better first of things. As you'll no doubt know, Woods never really turned up for the Tarver fight and it was a very meek and flat performance, totally out of line with what he'd been producing for the previous few years.

In his book and in a couple of other interviews I've seen recently, he mentions that everything was wrong going into that fight, and it's the one time in his career (even more so than the Jones fight) where he walked to the ring knowing that he was going to lose. In fact, he said that beforehand he'd decided his aim was simply to avoid getting knocked out, which might help explain why he was so lethargic and uninterested in trying to pressure Tarver for most of the fight.

Apparently him and his trainer Richard Poxon had basically stopped talking to each other by then (and have never spoken again since) and he'd been carrying a back injury which really should have forced a postponement. But it was a pretty major event for the Light-Heavyweight division (the first Johnson-Dawson fight was chief support) and Woods felt it was too big an event to pull out of. He also writes that the trilogy against Johnson took a lot out of him and he was never quite the same afterwards - he was out of the ring for a year after their final fight, during which time he needed two elbow operations which blunted him a little further.

I guess it's easy to make excuses afterwards, and to be fair Tarver's performance against Woods was one of his better ones post-Jones. Didn't stink the joint out as much as he did on other occasions. But the Woods who turned up that night was nothing like the one who'd destroyed Hoye or come through the tests against Johnson and Gonzalez.

Incidentally, Woods says that the sadly departed Gonzalez was a great guy, and that some of the very, very few people in boxing who he keeps in touch with are Gonzalez's old team, with whom he exchanges messages every now and then.