He was undefeated before his career was cut short after his final fight when he sustained serious injuries against Luis Resto in their ten-round bout.
Also a welterweight, Collins won his first 14 fights as a professional, among them a decision over future world title challenger Harold Brazier.
Collins was matched against Puerto Rican journeyman Luis Resto at Madison Square Garden in New York on June 16, 1983, on the undercard of the Roberto Durán vs. Davey Moore light middleweight title fight.
At the end of the fight, Collins' father, who was also his trainer, noticed that Resto's gloves felt thinner than normal and demanded that they be impounded.
[3] A subsequent investigation by the New York State Boxing Commission concluded that Resto's trainer, Panama Lewis, had removed an ounce of padding from each glove, making his punches harder and more damaging to Collins.
[5] On March 6, 1984, Collins was killed when the car in which he and his best friend were driving crashed into a culvert near his home in Antioch, Tennessee, a suburb of Nashville.
In 2007, Resto made a tearful apology to Collins-Nile for his role in the scheme unexpectedly during the making of a Showtime documentary about the fight.