Andy Lee wants Daniel Jacobs fight

By Boxing News - 10/23/2017 - Comments

Image: Andy Lee wants Daniel Jacobs fight

By Jeff Aranow: Former WBO middleweight champion Andy Lee (35-4-1, 24 KOs) says he wants to fight Daniel Jacobs (32-2, 29 KOs) in his next bout. Lee, 33, also is interested in fighting one of the champions, and he’d like to fight the winner of the Gennady “GGG” Golovkin vs. Saul Canelo Alvarez fight or the winner of the Billy Joe Saunders vs. David Lemieux fight for those titles.

Jacobs, 30, has a fight next month against unbeaten contender Luis Arias (18-0, 9 KOs) on November 11 on HBO Boxing from the Nassau Coliseum, in Uniondale, New York. Jacobs’ new promoter Eddie Hearn has already said that he wants to match Jacobs up against the winner of the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight. He specifically wants to match Jacobs up against Golovkin a second time because he believes he beat him in their fight last March. Lee, 33, might be seen as too dangerous for Jacobs’ plans.

With Lee, it’s a dicey fight, because sometimes he beats guys that are getting the better of him. The southpaw Lee’s powerful right hook is a game changer. Jacobs has been hurt before in his fights, and the last thing he needs is to be knocked out by Lee before he’s cashed in against the winner of the Canelo vs. Golovkin fight.

“I am eager to fight again, but it has to be the right fight,” said Lee to IFL TV. “Adam spoke to Eddie Hearn and spoke to HBO, and the people at Top Rank. There have been calls for fights. At this point in my life, I have nothing else to prove. I’ve achieved everything. I’d like to fight one of the champions. I’d like to fight Danny Jacobs. I believe on my day I’m still one of the best middleweights in the world, and I know I am. I’m not retired. I think it’s an easy fight to make,” said Lee.

Jacobs could probably agree to fight Lee, but he’s not the one that makes his fights. Hearn is now his promoter, and he might be too keen on putting him in with Lee. You have to realize that Lee doesn’t have anything to lose at this point in his career. Lee has only fought once in the last 2 years in beating KeAndrae Leatherwood by an 8 round unanimous decision on March18 on the undercard of the Golovkin vs. Jacobs fight at Madison Square Garden. The 6’2” Lee did not look that good despite winning a fairly lopsided eight round decision over Leatherwood.

How many top middleweights are out there? You can count them on one hand,” said Lee. ”Billy Joe and the Lemieux fight, that’s 2 of them out of the way. Golovkin-Canelo, that’s another 2 out of the way. Danny Jacobs is the other one. I’m the 6th one. There are only so many opponents. Who else are you going to fight? They know my name brings a certain amount of prestige, and a certain amount of danger,” said Lee.

There are more than 6 top middleweights in the division. Lee is overlooking Jermall Charlo, Ryota Murata and Sergiy Derevyanchenko. He’s also overlooking Luis Arias. Those 4 are very good fighters, and they might be good enough to beat both Jacobs and Lee. I would favor Charlo and Derevyanchenko over Lee and Jacobs. Those guys can really fight, and they have excellent power. Lee would have big problems with either of those guys because they have a ton of talent going for them.

Lee hasn’t helped himself by not fighting at all in 2016. Lee took last year off from boxing after his 12 round majority decision loss to Billy Joe Saunders on November 19, 2015. Lee was knocked down 2 times in round 3 of that fight. Lee then came storming back, but he didn’t do quite enough to get the win.

It would have been in Lee’s best interest to fight in the first quarter of 2016, and at least one other time so that he remained sharp and most importantly relevant with the boxing fans and the promoters for the top fighters. Promoters tend to ignore fighters that are perceived as a threat to their fighters. Hearn is especially careful when it comes to matching his fighters from his Matchroom Sport stable against dangerous punchers. What Hearn is trying to do is work Jacobs into a big money fight against Golovkin or Canelo.

HBO is vehicle that will assist Hearn in getting Jacobs one of those 2 big money fights. But while Jacobs waits for his opportunity to fight the winner or loser of the Canelo-GGG fight, he’s probably not going to want to fight someone with the kind of one-punch power that Lee has. Lee has shown to have a chin and stamina problems in the past, but he’s still very dangerous to anyone he fights. Jacobs doesn’t have a tough beard, as we saw in his knockout loss to Dmitry Pirog. Golovkin would have had a good chance of knocking Jacobs out if he hadn’t chosen to box him for 12 rounds instead of going after him the way Pirog did in 2010.

”People want to see that fight, whether it’s in America or England,” said Lee about Jacobs. ”I’d love it to be in Ireland. The fights always been easy to make, because I’m ready to fight. I’d love a rematch with Billy Joe Saunders. I’d love to fight the winner. Yeah, I do want a rematch. I could have a tune-up. We’ll see. I want big fights,” said Lee.

If Lee does get a fight against Jacobs, it won’t take place in Ireland. Hearn isn’t going to want to put Jacobs in the position where he’ll be fighting in front of 20,000 of Lee’s Irish boxing fans in Ireland.

Jacobs will be fighting in early 2018 if he gets past Arias on November 11. Hearn is already talking about when he wants Jacobs to fight again. However, Hearn is interested in matching Jacobs against David Lemieux. That’s a fight that he really wants to make. It’s a crazy fight though, because if Lemieux connects with even one of his huge shots, it could send Jacobs down for the count. We saw how the light hitting Sergio Mora dropped Jacobs hard in the 1st round in their first fight in 2015.

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