Azumah Nelson has been described as the greatest boxer to come out of Africa. Born the year after his home nation of Ghana gained independence, he played a major part in putting this new country on the world map. A glittering amateur career saw him win every title except an Olympic medal, as Ghana boycotted the 1980 Games when he was a favourite to win. After turning professional, he took a last-minute bout for the world title with the great Salvador Sanchez, a bout that changed his life. Two years later, in 1984, he won the WBC Featherweight World Title. Like many champions, he rose from humble beginnings, suffered tragedy along the way, but he won and remained a world champion at featherweight and super featherweight for eleven years. Very few champions have carried such a burden of expectation, and Azumah delivered success at a time when his country needed a hero. He never faltered and won the respect of many across the world.

'When Charlie's good he's great. But when he's bad he's better!' John Ibrahim, best-selling author of Last King of the Cross Charles Staunton was a good cop. Until he got sacked from the police force and sent to jail for refusing to inform on his mates. On both sides of the law that loyalty makes Charlie a 'good bloke'. And in a world of shadows, where trust is the highest currency, a good bloke is worth his weight in gold. Charlie becomes a private detective and Mr Fix-it in Sydney's underworld. His associates are colourful, their adventures hair-raising. The good times roll the good bloke around the world, into fancy hotels and fast-lane living... then smack-bang into the Pacific Mariner Cartel. Cool under pressure and handy in a gunfight, Charlie becomes 'The Prince' - a master of disguise and mythic smuggler of millions to all corners of the earth. Until the DEA kicks down the door and arrests him in one of the biggest drug busts in history. Busted but unbroken, Charlie's troubles are only just beginning. Stuck in Canada's toughest prison, between two fiercely warring bikie gangs, Charlie must use all his street smarts to stay alive. After all, there's a double-date with Madonna and a beer with The Godfather to get to...

It was the night Jeff Harding came back to the corner at the end of the eleventh, behind on all three judges' cards and bleeding around both eyes, his nose long broken. As Lewis cleaned the cuts he quickly poured everything that was important into his ear. Then he picked him up from his stool with one last instruction: 'Go out and come back champion of the world ...' Over the past thirty years Johnny Lewis has trained six world champions, among them some of the greatest names in the sport; Jeff Fenech, Kostya Tszyu and, yes, Jeff Harding. Yet he is known for much more than that. For a wisdom that stems from his childhood growing up in Erskineville, where he mixed with hustlers and hard men and, in his words, never met a bad bloke. Now, in his authorised biography, we learn why Johnny Lewis is not only Australia's greatest ever fight trainer, but why he is a winner, and why those around him are winners. Why his lessons of the gym hold true outside the ring.

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This book looks at boxing in Australia from early European settlement to the present day. Packed with stories, you can read about the first recorded fight; the racially charged match between a white and a black man; the travelling boxing shows; the Indigenous champions, including Lionel Rose; women boxers; and modern-day winners such as Jeff Fenech, Anthony Mundine and Kostya Tszyu. It is full of fabulous images, text boxes with additional snippets of information and profile boxes with vital statistics for key boxers.

Boxing is no cakewalk! Azumah ‘Ring Professor’ Nelson in the Social History of Ghanaian Boxingexplores the social history of boxing in Ghana and its interesting nexus with the biography of Azumah Nelson, unquestionably Ghana’s most celebrated boxer. The book posits that sports constitute more than mere games that people play. They are endowed with enormous political, cultural, economic and social power that can influence people’s lives in various ways. Boxing is no cakewalk! interrogates the social meaning and impact of boxing within the colonial and postcolonial milieux of popular culture in Ghana. Consequently, it reconsiders the prevailing conception of boxing as adversative to ‘enlightened’ human culture by arguing that it is a positive formulator of individual and national identities. The historicising of sports and the lives of sportspersons in Ghana provides an eloquent backdrop for an understanding of the past social dynamics and their effect in the present. The book’s analytical narrative offers an intellectual contribution to the promising areas of social and cultural history in Ghana’s historiography and the scholarly discourse on identity formation and social empowerment through the popular culture of sports.