Johnny Nuttall was born into a large Anglo-Indian family in Calcutta, where he also grew up. A sergeant in the Calcutta Police by the late 1930s, Nuttall played cricket and field hockey in Bengal in the early 1940s, but saw the most success in the sport of boxing as he was chosen to represent India at the 1948 Olympics in London. Competing in the middleweight division, he lost in the second round to Italy’s Ivano Fontana. Following the Olympics, Nuttall moved to London and turned professional, competing from 1949 to 1953 and amassing a record of 12 wins and 17 losses.