Irish middleweight prospect Andy Lee (14-0, 11 KOs) caused his opponent Jason McKay (18-2, 5 KOs) to quit after the sixth round tonight at the National Stadium, in Dublin, Ireland. Though the fight was considered to be the toughest bout of the 23 year-old Lee’s career, the fight in fact was one of Lee’s easiest, mostly because of his anger at McKay for some comments he had made about Lee during the pre-fight banter.
Instead of firing back with reciprocal backtalk, Lee let his fists do the talking for him, as he systematically destroyed his Irish opponent tonight. From the opening bell, it was apparent that McKay wasn’t in the same class as Lee, as he wasn’t fast enough or powerful enough to match Lee’s offensive arsenal. Lee unleashed several hard right hands in the 2nd round, one of which dropped McKay to the canvas, hurt.
However, after getting up from the knockdown, Lee didn’t press the issue, instead opting to allow his opponent to continue fighting, as if Lee was having a brief bit of mercy on him in an effort to keep the fight going longer. McKay, 30, probably wished he had stayed down, as Lee continued unloading huge hooks, mixing up his punches from body to head and keeping McKay guessing.
In the fifth and sixth rounds, Lee stepped up his pace as he began to brutally punish McKay with wicket shots, hitting him with numerous power left hands. It was only a matter of time before the fight was stopped, whether by McKay going down or the referee stepping in and halting the bout. However, after the sixth round, McKay failed to come out for the 7th round, obviously wanting to avoid getting hit with anymore monstrous shots from Lee.
Lee’s manager, Emanuel Steward, said later, “’Andy Lee will beat Kelly Pavlik to become middle-weight champion of the world,’ said manager Emanuel Steward ”[John] Duddy may not want to fight Pavlik just yet but Andy Lee will fight any middleweight in the world today.”