By Scott Gilfoid: Former WBO 160 pound champion Peter Quillin (31-0, 22 KOs) intends on testing WBO middleweight champion Andy Lee’s chin early this Saturday night in their fight on NBC on the Premier Boxing Champions at the Barclay Center in Brooklyn, New York. Quillin doesn’t know if Lee is vulnerable to getting knocked out, but he sure will be looking to find that out when he nails Lee with some of his best shots.

Lee has shown in the past to have a weak chin when nailed hard, and Quillin has better punching power than the guys that have knocked Lee out in the past. That’s not good for Lee because it puts him in a situation where he’s going to need to try and get to Quillin early in this fight if he doesn’t want to get knocked out cold by him.

“I never trailed in a fight and came back and won like Lee,” Quillin said via Fighthype.com. “I’ve just won all the time right out of the gate. Those other guys aren’t ‘Kid Chocolate’ so I think that’s why this fight was made. I’m getting paid for 12 rounds so I’m preparing for 12 rounds but if I can get him out of there early I will.”

Quillin is right about him never having to rally to win. He’s always been the front runner in his fights, and it’s been his opponents who have been forced to try and rally to win. Quillin has never let his opponents come back on him due to his tremendous talent. I suspect that it’ll be the same situation with Lee. He’s going to likely be trailing in the fight, and will be forced to try and come back. You don’t want to be trailing in a fight against Quillin because he’ll use his skills to box circles around Lee and get an easy victory.

Lee showed in his fights against Brian Vera and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr that he has a shaky chin in the past. This means that if his punch resistance hasn’t improved since those defeats, Lee is going to have a lot of problems against Quillin due to him having better speed and power than Vera. The last thing that Lee wants to do on Saturday is fall behind early against a talent like Quillin because this fight could get really out of hand in a hurry.

“A lot of people had Lee as the underdog in his last fight but he came out and did great,” Quillin said. “That’s the thing about boxing; one punch can change the fight.”

Well, Lee was able to come from behind to win his last two fights, but he also wasn’t facing anyone that you can really call a good fighter. I mean, he beat junior middleweight John Jackson and the inexperienced Matt Korobov. What was Lee doing fighting a junior middleweight? If Quillin decided to face a junior middleweight rather than a middleweight, I don’t think that anyone would be making a big production about it if he knocked the poor guy out. Korobov never beat anyone that you can call a good fighter. He was just some guy who had been facing tune-up after tune-up ever since he turned pro in 2008. The fact that Lee was able to beat Korobov was no big deal because Korobov had never proven himself as a good fighter.