Bernard O’Neill meets middleweight fighter Andy Lee, the former Irish Olympic boxer who turned pro with one of the world’s top gyms and is well on his way to becoming a world title contender
If middleweight contender Andy Lee does go on to win a world title, then the name Jesus Gonzalez is likely to be mentioned as playing a significant part in the Irish man’s path to glory.
Lee met Gonzalez in the semi-finals of the World Junior Championships in Cuba in September 2002 and beat the then American junior champion from Phoenix, Arizona by 19-17 in a keenly fought battle of the southpaws. Lee, then boxing at light middleweight, went on to lose the final to Cuban Noelvis Dias (30-20) in front of over 10,000 partisan fight fans in Santiago De Cuba, but his performance did not go unnoticed.
The former St Francis Limerick clubman said one of the few things he could remember about that night was the soaring heat and humidity, which made it difficult to breathe, let alone punch. However, renowned American coach and manager Emanuel Steward had the means to remember what he needed to know about that tournament, courtesy of a video he received highlighting Lee’s semi-final victory over Gonzales.
Steward, who has trained and managed over 30 world champions – including Thomas ‘The Hit Man’ Hearns, Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis, to name but three – has always been interested in tall fighters, and the 6ft 2in Lee fitted nicely into that category. Tentative approaches were hence made to the English-born Irishman from Steward’s legendary Kronk Gym in Detroit.
However, Lee, who was born in London before moving back to his mother Anne’s hometown of Limerick in the mid 1990s, always wanted to box for his country in the Olympics. He said: “My ambition was always to box for Ireland every since I saw Michael Carruth win a gold medal at the Barcelona Games and Wayne McCullough win silver.
“When I started winning Irish titles there were enquiries from the English but there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to represent Ireland.”
Lee, whose father Tom is from Dublin, eventually realised his ambition and qualified for the Athens 2004 Olympics from the European Senior Championships in Croatia, winning a bronze medal into the bargain.
The Limerick man – then one of the key members of the Irish Amateur Boxing Association’s High Performance programme – made an impressive debut in Athens, beating Mexican puncher Alfredo Lopez 38-23. But he lost his next fight to Cameroon-born Hassan Ndam Njikan on a count back after both boxers were locked at 27-27. Lee was devastated, but Steward was still very much interested in the young fighter, who finally put pen to paper on a five-year contract with the Kronk Gym in December 2005 and has since won his first nine professional fights without even dropping a round.
“It took a lot of deliberation on my part to sign the contract with Emanuel Steward as I really enjoyed boxing as an amateur and I was treated brilliantly by the Irish Amateur Boxing Association and the Irish Sports Council,” said Lee.
His last victory came in Memphis recently when he dropped Clinton Bonds in one round, just a few weeks after flooring ex-world champ Carl Daniels at New York’s world-famous Madison Square Garden with a third-round right hook that is already being touted for the knockout of the year award.
Even the legendary Jake LaMotta was impressed with Lee’s demolition of Daniels. “What a punch, the lights went out on Broadway. This Irish kid has got class,” he said.
Lee added: “I enjoyed that punch but Daniels was a very experienced, tricky fighter and I learned a lot from those three rounds. I was using my right jab to great effect against Daniels and he was wary of it.
“In the third round I decided to show him the jab which he was expecting but I just changed it around to a right hook at the last moment and I knew once it landed that the fight was over.”
Lee is now in training at a camp in Austria with world heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, and will fight on the Klitschko undercard in Germany on 7 July. The former Irish Olympian has added a green stripe and shamrock to the famous gold and red trunk colours of the Kronk Gym shorts he sports in the ring – a sign of the indelible mark he’s already made on the sport. So will he be the first-ever Irish world champion to emerge from the renowned Detroit boxing academy? “Obviously the objective is to be up there challenging for a world title sometime in the near future,” said Lee, “but I have a bit of a way to travel yet and I’m not rushing anything. Everything is moving along nicely and nothing is being rushed.”
And what of his former opponent Jesus Gonzales, who turned pro in 2003 just a few months after being beaten by Lee in Cuba and has won 20 of his 21 fights? “Gonzalez is doing well for himself and has an impressive record. We have both come a long way since the 2002 World Junior Champion-ships.”
A long way indeed.
Lee met Gonzalez in the semi-finals of the World Junior Championships in Cuba in September 2002 and beat the then American junior champion from Phoenix, Arizona by 19-17 in a keenly fought battle of the southpaws. Lee, then boxing at light middleweight, went on to lose the final to Cuban Noelvis Dias (30-20) in front of over 10,000 partisan fight fans in Santiago De Cuba, but his performance did not go unnoticed.
The former St Francis Limerick clubman said one of the few things he could remember about that night was the soaring heat and humidity, which made it difficult to breathe, let alone punch. However, renowned American coach and manager Emanuel Steward had the means to remember what he needed to know about that tournament, courtesy of a video he received highlighting Lee’s semi-final victory over Gonzales.
Steward, who has trained and managed over 30 world champions – including Thomas ‘The Hit Man’ Hearns, Evander Holyfield and Lennox Lewis, to name but three – has always been interested in tall fighters, and the 6ft 2in Lee fitted nicely into that category. Tentative approaches were hence made to the English-born Irishman from Steward’s legendary Kronk Gym in Detroit.
However, Lee, who was born in London before moving back to his mother Anne’s hometown of Limerick in the mid 1990s, always wanted to box for his country in the Olympics. He said: “My ambition was always to box for Ireland every since I saw Michael Carruth win a gold medal at the Barcelona Games and Wayne McCullough win silver.
“When I started winning Irish titles there were enquiries from the English but there was no doubt in my mind that I wanted to represent Ireland.”
Lee, whose father Tom is from Dublin, eventually realised his ambition and qualified for the Athens 2004 Olympics from the European Senior Championships in Croatia, winning a bronze medal into the bargain.
The Limerick man – then one of the key members of the Irish Amateur Boxing Association’s High Performance programme – made an impressive debut in Athens, beating Mexican puncher Alfredo Lopez 38-23. But he lost his next fight to Cameroon-born Hassan Ndam Njikan on a count back after both boxers were locked at 27-27. Lee was devastated, but Steward was still very much interested in the young fighter, who finally put pen to paper on a five-year contract with the Kronk Gym in December 2005 and has since won his first nine professional fights without even dropping a round.
“It took a lot of deliberation on my part to sign the contract with Emanuel Steward as I really enjoyed boxing as an amateur and I was treated brilliantly by the Irish Amateur Boxing Association and the Irish Sports Council,” said Lee.
His last victory came in Memphis recently when he dropped Clinton Bonds in one round, just a few weeks after flooring ex-world champ Carl Daniels at New York’s world-famous Madison Square Garden with a third-round right hook that is already being touted for the knockout of the year award.
Even the legendary Jake LaMotta was impressed with Lee’s demolition of Daniels. “What a punch, the lights went out on Broadway. This Irish kid has got class,” he said.
Lee added: “I enjoyed that punch but Daniels was a very experienced, tricky fighter and I learned a lot from those three rounds. I was using my right jab to great effect against Daniels and he was wary of it.
“In the third round I decided to show him the jab which he was expecting but I just changed it around to a right hook at the last moment and I knew once it landed that the fight was over.”
Lee is now in training at a camp in Austria with world heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko, and will fight on the Klitschko undercard in Germany on 7 July. The former Irish Olympian has added a green stripe and shamrock to the famous gold and red trunk colours of the Kronk Gym shorts he sports in the ring – a sign of the indelible mark he’s already made on the sport. So will he be the first-ever Irish world champion to emerge from the renowned Detroit boxing academy? “Obviously the objective is to be up there challenging for a world title sometime in the near future,” said Lee, “but I have a bit of a way to travel yet and I’m not rushing anything. Everything is moving along nicely and nothing is being rushed.”
And what of his former opponent Jesus Gonzales, who turned pro in 2003 just a few months after being beaten by Lee in Cuba and has won 20 of his 21 fights? “Gonzalez is doing well for himself and has an impressive record. We have both come a long way since the 2002 World Junior Champion-ships.”
A long way indeed.
