By Victor Salazar

Tampa, Florida - “Is there any reporters in here tonight?” A very happy Willie Nelson told the media following his 9th round knockout win over Tony Harrison. Nelson told the media all week they would be wrong and he backed those words up with an overhand right that sent Harrison to the canvas. Harrison would never recover forcing the referee to stop the fight.”

Nelson said the plan was to get him tired and go for the knockout.

“The plan was to go for the knockout,” stated Nelson. “That was my personal plan. I was very confident because of my punch output and I thought that would be the difference. I was waiting for him to get tired because you can only fight for so long on shaky legs.”

Nelson knew he was down on the cards but felt he had the right game plan in place to take Harrison somewhere he has never been.

“My corner told me we was down but I’m not sure by how much but the point was to stick to the game plan, take him deep,” explained Nelson. “I just wanted to stay calm, stay relaxed, and wait for him to make mistakes and he did.”

Nelson spoke of Harrison’s body language and talking to him during the fights as a sign of his confidence lever dropping

“I noticed after a while, a few body shot had hurt him and he started to bend down, that’s when I started to throw a few uppercuts to the chin,” stated Nelson. “I started studying him throughout the fight and as we went on I could tell a change in his demeanor. He would tell me good jab, well you don’t tell someone that in the fight, maybe in sparring but not in the ring in a real fight.”

The punch that ended the fight was an overhand right, a punch that Nelson says he worked on to end the fight.

“I was forcing the overhand right early on. I just knew I was going to catch him with it because it was the main punch we worked on it mainly.”