Johnson won the famous belt with a destructive first round stoppage of reigning champing Frank Buglioni at the O2 in London on the 24th of March.
All British boxers at some stage in their career dream of winning the Lonsdale belt, but it was even more significant for Johnson who fulfilled a promise to his late Father when he won the title.
Discussing what it meant to him, Johnson exclusively told World Boxing News: “Yeah obviously it was a massive achievement, you see people winning the British title on tele and you think wow, imagine if I could do that one day.
“Then obviously with my dad passing away and before I buried him, I promised I would go on and win it.
“I had a lot of pressure on my shoulders to fulfil that promise and to actually do it and what it’s done is take a lot of pressure off of my shoulders.”
The win over Buglioni was achieved in such a fashion that Johnson is bound to have won him a new legion of fans and now that he has finally fulfilled his dream of winning the British title he can move forward in his career.
“I can just enjoy the game now, it was a massive achievement the pressure has been on and nobody can ever take it away from me,” he said.
The 32 year-old had been fairly inactive prior to March 24th, and with that inactivity came doubters, especially as his opponent Buglioni had been on such a fine run of form.
“I had a lot of doubters going into the fight, even in my hometown I heard a lot of people doubting me, but I have been inactive so you can’t really blame people for that.
“I was very confident going into the fight, I had been in the gym the full time and I knew I had the tools and the abilities to beat Frank and beat him convincingly and that’s what I did,” Johnson concluded.
Thomas Davison is a staff writer for World Boxing News. Follow Thomas on Twitter @thomasdavison93
