Andy Lee hopes to wear Korobov down late in the fight

By Boxing News - 12/10/2014 - Comments

lee564545By Scott Gilfoid: #4 WBO Andy Lee (33-2, 23 KOs) will be bringing a 5-fight winning streak into the ring this Saturday night on December 13th when he takes on #1 WBO Matt Korobov (24-0, 14 KOs) for the vacant World Boxing Organization middleweight title at the Cosmopolitan of Las Vegas, in Las Vegas, Nevada, USA.

Lee, 6’2”, hasn’t fought a solid middleweight since his 7th round destruction at the hands of Julio Cesar Chavez Jr in 2012, and for that reason it’s difficult to know for sure what we’ll get from the stork-like Lee in this fight.

To be sure, Lee has won his last five fights, but the opposition has been mostly weak and he’s coming off of a fight against John Jackson where he looked God awful until knocking him out with a single right hook to the head in the 5th.

Lee believes that he’ll be able to out-box the 31-year-old Korobov on Saturday. He notes that Korobov has stamina problems, especially late in his fights and he thinks that’s an avenue that he can take to wear him down to get the victory.

“The more I watch him [Korobov] the more confident I get, and I see a lot of opportunities that he is going to give me to out-box him – and if it does go into the late rounds, how I can hurt him,” Lee said via Toe 2 Toe podcast via Skysports.com. “I think my extra experience and extra power will be the deciding factors and pull me through the last few rounds.”

Lee’s experience isn’t that great to be honest. I mean, he’s been in fights against the likes of Chavez Jr, Jackson, Craig McEwan and Brian Vera, but he’s not looked good in any of those fights. Lee has been fighting for the past eight years as a pro, but the best guys on his resume are Jackson, McEwan, Chavez Jr and Vera. As for the rest of the fighters that Lee has fought, they’ve been mostly obscure mediocre fighters with marginal skills.

It’s not as if Lee has been battling the best middleweights for the past eight years. I think the idea was for him to do that, but after his knockout loss to Vera in 2008, Lee was matched against largely weak opponents for the next three years until he avenged his loss to Vera in 2011.

“My aim is to out-box him for the first half and put the pressure on him in the second half of the fight and dominate him both physically and mentally,” Lee said.

It’s possible that Lee will be able to wear Korobov down late in the fight if he’s able to avoid exchanging with him, but I wouldn’t be surprised to see Korobov go straight at Lee and take him out the way Chavez Jr and Vera did.

Korobov knows Lee’s weaknesses, and he’s very likely going to be forcing him to exchange with him in every round. Lee’s stamina is arguably just as bad as Korobov’s, and he seems to lose his legs when he’s forced to fight hard.



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