By Scott Gilfoid: A fight between newly crowned WBO middleweight champion Andy Lee (34-2, 24 KOs) and #6 WBA Danish fighter Patrick Nielsen (23-1, 11 KOs) is being talked about for March 14th in Dublin, Ireland.
The guy that Lee was supposed to fight, #1 WBO Billy Joe Saunders, will have to wait until the summer for a title shot against Lee if the Lee-Nielsen fight comes off, according to Irish-Boxing.com.
What’s interesting about the Lee vs. Nielsen fight is that the 23-year-old Nielsen was recently beaten by Dmitry Chudinov by a fairly wide 12 round unanimous decision last June.
Just why Lee would want to fight a guy who was recently beaten is anyone’s guess. What’s further confusing is why the World Boxing Organization would even sanction a fight between Lee and Nielsen, given that Nielsen was recently beaten. I mean, I can understand a champion wanting to milk his title with a safe opponent to make sure they at least have one successful title defense before they potentially lost their strap, but I don’t understand a champion defending their belt against someone who was just beaten not long ago.
It makes no sense and cheapens the title belts in my view. If Lee wanted a stay busy fight, he should fight Chudinov, the guy that beat Nielsen.
The Lee vs. Nielsen fight could also take place on March 21st if they can’t get it signed for the 14th.
Lee recently beat previously undefeated Matt Korobov by a 6th round knockout victory last December. For Lee, it was his second straight comeback win after he previously had to rally to stop John Jackson in the 5th round knockout last year in June.
It seems pretty obvious that Lee will soon run out of comeback victories and will wind up losing. His boxing ability is suspect and this causes him to lose a lot of rounds and need to score knockouts to get victories. I don’t expect Nielsen to unseat Lee, because the guy is very basic and has a ring record filled with little more than five years of fluff opposition.
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