By the time Norman Neely steps into the ring on June 21, he will have been inactive for 15 months. The fight, an eight-round heavyweight bout against Virginia’s James Willis, will be broadcast live on ESPN+ from the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey, giving Neely a big audience to return to after being kept out of the ring by injuries since last March.
Although 15 months off isn’t an insignificant layoff for a 35-year-old athlete, it pales in comparison to the 10 years he was away from the sport from 2009 to 2019. Neely had been a five-time national champion as a teenager, winning the Junior Olympic National Championships and National PAL Championships in 2006, compiling a record of 57-7. Neely’s talent even earned him an invitation to spar with then-heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko ahead of Klitschko’s 2009 fight against Eddie Chambers.
It seemed Neely, from Paterson, New Jersey, was destined for stardom as a professional. Then the siren call of the streets caused him to lose focus, which eventually led him to prison for six and a half years.
“I was hanging around the wrong people, the wrong crowd at the wrong time,” said “Pooh” Neely, 15-1 (10 KOs), of the drug charges that sent him to prison from 2010 until 2017.
Instead of appearing in Las Vegas, New York and Atlantic City, Neely was going from Yardville to Bordentown to Rahway to Northern State, then on to Bayside and Southern State during his incarceration. During that time, Neely maintained a connection to the sport that had made him a champion through a monthly subscription to The Ring magazine, in which he read about many of the same boxers he had competed alongside at national championships, such as Terence Crawford and Vic Pasillas – and even Joey Dawejko, the Philadelphia-based big man he fought four times as an amateur.
“In my mind, I used to wonder, what if this never happened?” Neely told BoxingScene. “I wonder if I could have done this or that. Me being a competitor, I always want to challenge myself. I wonder if I could do it.”
Finally, after Neely was released from prison, he would get the chance. Among the people he linked up with upon his release were Dwyke Flemmings, a former amateur whom he had known since his earliest days in the gym at Joe Grier’s Gym in Paterson. Flemmings, who trained him briefly before his boxing sabbatical, had always been a big-brother figure to Neely. Flemmings reminded him that he still had time to make something out of himself – if he was willing to put the work in.
“I know Pooh likes the nicer things in life and he had the ability to have boxing give him that while keeping out of trouble and keeping him focused. I was always in his ear about it, and that’s how we got to where we are,” said Flemmings, whose son – the 10-0 (9 KOs) junior middleweight Dwyke Flemmings Jnr – will face Demian Fernandez, 15-6 (5 KOs), on the card, which is headlined by the Vito Mielnicki Jnr vs. Kamil Gardzielik middleweight fight.
“Dwyke always been in my ear since I was 15-16 years old talking about how I could be someone in there,” Neely said. “Then he was like, ‘You could still do something, get in the gym.’ I wound up getting in the gym and I ended up loving it again.”
Neely, who left prison at 290lbs, worked his way down to 237lbs when he made his professional debut in April 2019, stopping Lamar Lewis in four rounds. Neely fought every other month on various cards across the East Coast, even making trips to Mexico and Dubai to find fights after the COVID-19 pandemic slowed down the sport. His career had been moving smoothly until December 2022, when Neely was derailed by Rydell Booker, a one-time cruiserweight prospect who ironically also had his career interrupted for more than a decade by a drug-related prison stint.
Neely was caught early by a right hand from Booker and knocked to all fours by a combination. He beat the count but took a knee at the count of eight to regroup and had the fight waved off. Neely learned a hard but valuable lesson that night.
“It taught me that you can have all the talent in the world, but if you don’t work hard, it don’t mean nothing,” said Neely. “My trainer’s been telling me that for years: ‘Stop slacking.’ I’m supposed to do what I’m supposed to do, and I haven’t.
“If you cheat on boxing, eventually it’s gonna catch up with you. And it caught up with me. I learned the hard way.”
Flemmings admits that there were times he would get in his car and drive around the neighborhood at night, only to find Neely hanging out late when he should have been resting. He reminded Neely that, although he might think he’s tricking his coach, he can’t trick boxing, because the shortcuts he takes will result in poorer performance in the ring.
Now Flemmings says Neely is finally starting to understand what he has to do in order to get the most out of his potential.
“I think he finally got that together because I can definitely see the difference in his training, and I expect a beautiful performance from him,” said Flemmings. “He’s in the best mental state I’ve seen him in a long time. He’s working out 2-3 times a day, and I’m really pleased with his training.”
Against Willis, Neely will need to be at his best.
What the 6-1-1 (5 KOs) Willis lacks in amateur experience and height (5ft, 9ins), he makes up for with power and aggression. The 31-year-old from Roanoke only turned pro in 2023, seemingly without any amateur fights, but Willis managed to hold 14-1 heavyweight Malik Titus to a majority draw in his most recent fight in March.
“I’ve seen a little clip of him on YouTube – we watched it for about a minute. He comes to fight. He don’t slack at all,” said Neely, who has been sparring extensively with Michael Hilton – the former National Golden Gloves champion and unbeaten pro whom he fought in his final amateur bout back in 2009.
Although Neely can’t turn back the hands of time, he knows, particularly in the heavyweight division, that he’s always one punch away from making a name for himself. What the fighter calls his “trials and tribulations” have taught him to respect the sport in a way he admits he didn’t when he was younger, when everything seemed to come so easy. Adversity has a way of humbling us all, and Neely now has a healthy respect for boxing – and just how quickly it can all slip away.
An impressive win in front of a big audience would go a long way towards covering lost ground.
“I’m definitely a phone call or two away,” Neely said. “When I put on a great performance, you never know who is watching.”
Ryan Songalia is a reporter and editor for jeetwin360.com and has written for ESPN, the New York Daily News, Rappler, The Guardian, Vice and The Ring magazine. He holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter at .