A condensed version of this article was first published at BigFightWeekend.com
In the Spring of 79, deep in the bowels of the City Ground, home of Nottingham Forest Football Club, Brian Clough waited to conduct his media obligations. It was after 10 o’clock, in the aftermath of his team’s 3-3 draw with German champions Cologne in the Semi-Final of the European Cup. A result that meant the East Midlands club would need to win in Germany to progress in their maiden season competing alongside Europe’s elite.
Bristling with self-assurance, and as a man for whom miracles were customary, Clough refused to succumb to the notion that the team’s failure to secure a first leg lead meant their barely conceivable adventure in the competition would soon be at an end. He appeared emboldened by the doubt of others. As his team washed the clotted mud from their bodies and the Forest faithful wandered into the darkness beyond the floodlights, Clough closed the post-match TV interview with a lingering look toward the camera, a wry smile spilling across his face and the words; “I hope anybody’s not stupid enough to write us off.”
As Leeds’ hero Josh Warrington was whacked to the canvas on Saturday night by a series of unanswered hooks from the WBA Champion, and proud Nottingham man, Leigh Wood, having spent much of the completed rounds dominating his now conqueror, that quote drifted back to mind.
Warrington had, for much of the preceding 7 rounds, proved entirely too aggressive, mobile and persistent for Wood. Sweeping rounds 3-6 on the cards, sharing the openers and cutting the defending Champion in the process.
Warrington looked stronger, more confident and rendered Wood, who appeared ‘flat’ at the Featherweight limit, disorganised on a number of occasions. Only a sudden referee’s intervention and immediate point deduction in the 7th round interrupted Warrington’s characteristic charge. Rules are often merely a guideline in a Warrington fight but Michael Alexander’s sanction were not predicated by the customary warnings despite a series of Warrington ‘excursions’ beyond those rules offering ample invitation to do so. It took Warrington by surprise.
In the pause Alexander inserted in Warrington’s instinctive attacks and his momentary loss of concentration as the 7th round drew to a close, Wood found a gap in Warrington’s defence and delivered a right hand to the point of the chin. The blow was followed by a series of hooks which felled the Leeds man and hurt him further on the way down. Warrington did clamber back to vertical, but with a degree of disorientation still swirling and with the round at a close he turned to his corner at the count of 8 and, as a result, was adjudged unable to continue.
For Wood it was the type of Cinderella comeback he has developed a habit of making, to the point he appears entirely more dangerous when behind on the cards and struggling to compete. Shades of Carl Thompson, the gnarly Cruiserweight who stunned several good men when a mile behind on the cards a decade or more ago. The vanquished Warrington adds another sour note to a late career festooned with similarly frustrating nights where the luxurious ornaments of ‘Vegas fight’ and Unification bouts were meant to hang.
This victory, likely Wood’s last contest at Featherweight despite the belt he kept in triumph, is the latest in a series of surprises in a golden Autumn to a 12-year-career. One that appeared destined for meagre returns as recently as 2020 when Wood lost to Jazza Dickens for a peripheral WBO European belt.
A boxer’s affinity with a football club is often little more than opportunism and a vehicle for free promotion to an obvious demographic. Mike Tyson wearing a Manchester United shirt before he fought Julius Francis in 2000 a conspicuous and extreme example. But there is more to the relationship between Wood and the fans of Nottingham Forest, who witnessed one of sport’s purest underdog stories in the late Seventies when Brian Clough took the modest club from the second tier of domestic football and made them English, and then two-time European Champions. All this occurred long before Wood was even born, but nevertheless it is a period of such luminous achievement that it continues to define and inspire the City’s inhabitants forty plus years on and three decades removed from Clough’s retirement.
This symbiosis between Wood and Forest, their relative status in the global sports they compete in and their history of punching far beyond their means, will become further entwined in 2024 when Leigh Wood’s dream of boxing at The City Ground, home to the club since 1898, becomes a reality.
The 35-year-old Wood, who is likely to debut at the 130 pound Super-Featherweight limit in this proposed crescendo, will almost certainly face Josh Warrington in a rematch to Saturday’s encounter. It is the richest and easiest match up to pursue and guarantees the Stadium is full when the two meet. Like Wood, Warrington has a symbiotic relationship with his own home town football club, Leeds United, and they will still arrive in their thousands in late Spring next year despite their hero now boasting just one win in five.
Few of the Forest faithful present on the night will worry if Warrington gets the better of Wood in the early going next year.
Because Wood, like Brian Clough and his band of mercurials and misfits before him, has taught the people of Nottingham, and many more from around the world, to never be stupid enough to write him off.
And, as the song goes, to believe in miracles.
BOXINGWRITER.CO.UK 
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