Andy Lee vs. Willie Gibbs: Is Andy Overrated?

By Boxing News - 07/11/2008 - Comments

lee3646461.jpgBy Chris Williams: Popular Irish middleweight Andy Lee (15-1, 12 KOs) will be making a minor comeback on July 19th against American Willie Gibbs (20-3, 16 KOs) in a scheduled 10-round bout at the University Arena, in Limerick, Ireland. In his last fight, the 24 year-old Lee was stopped in the 7th round by Brian Vera (16-1, 10 KOs) on March 21st. For most fighters, there’s no shame in losing to a fighter in the class of Vera, who after all was a former star on The Contender reality television boxing series on ESPN2. Lee wasn’t supposed to be losing to anyone, especially a fighter like Vera who was considered to be a notch or two lower than the highly hyped Lee in most people’s minds.

Perhaps it was this kind of belief that made Lee careless in the fight, rushing out and trying to slug it out with the equally powerful, albeit slower and less skilled, Vera in the opening rounds of the fight. Even with his badly flawed plan Lee almost succeeded in taking Vera out in the 1st round after knocking him down late in the round with a heavy left hand shot. It happened at the end of the round, much to Lee’s regret, which allowed Vera to escape the round without taking any more punishment. In looking back at the fight, I have serious doubts that Vera would have made it out of the 1st round if the knockout had occurred earlier in the round.

Lee was fresh and punching with tremendous power and speed, and he looked as if he would have buried Vera with punches if given another shot at him after the knockdown. As it was, Vera was given time to recover in between rounds. In the second round, Lee was momentarily hurt late in the round by a big right hand from Vera. Up until then, it had been target practice for Lee, who was showering Vera with punches hitting him in the body and head with equal measure. In the 4th round, Lee was cut over his right eye by a punch from Vera, who looked to be getting more confident the longer the fight was going on.

He was still getting hit an awful lot by big shots from Lee, but he seemed to be very motivated about the fight, probably because he was still standing in there and hadn’t been stretch like most people though he had been. By the 6th round, Lee looked badly tired, his face red, his legs gone and along with it much of the power on his punches.

In the meantime, Vera seemed even stronger, landing his right hand more and more. Vera’s face looked as if he hadn’t been hit all night, showing neither redness nor swelling, even though he was hit with the much harder shots and much more frequently than Lee had been hit in the fight. Chalk it up to good skin and good stamina, I guess. A round later, in the 7th, Lee was staggered by Vera after taking two big rights, and was in bad shape when the referee jumped in and stopped the bout.

Some boxing fans would argue afterwards with the referee’s decision, pointing out that Lee was still fighting back at the time of the stoppage, but it seemed clear that Vera would have gotten to Lee in this round, not the next, and would have taken him with another series of right hands. Lee was simply too tired, and didn’t have any defense against the right hands that Vera was throwing in the fight.

It’s hard to say what has gone through the mind of Emanuel Steward, the trainer of Lee, to want to put him in with a risky opponent like Willie Gibbs. It seems like a bad move, for Lee didn’t appear ready to fight Vera, a good B-level fighter at best, in his last fight. Gibbs, in spite of his recent losses to powerhouse puncher Edison Miranda and another loss to Raymond Joval, he can still punch very hard with his right hand. This can be a big problem for Lee, who had previously built up his excellent record beating mainly C-level fighters with little power, and when he finally faced a better opponent with decent but not great power, Lee was found wanting.

I’d rate Gibbs around the same level as Vera, maybe even a little better than him. Certainly, he’s a better puncher than Vera and has about the same poor hand speed as him. I suppose the difference here is that Gibbs’ chin isn’t nearly as good as Vera, which should give Lee a big advantage in the fight, for he may be able to take him out quickly with a flurry of shots like Miranda did in his 1st round TKO of Gibbs in December 2006.

However, if Lee fails at knocking Gibbs out in the fight, you can expect a similar scenario as the Vera fight with Lee taking tremendous punishment from Gibbs. Like I said, Gibbs has an excellent right hand, much better than Vera’s, and if he can hit Lee even a small number of times with it, I see Lee’s skin breaking down as easily as it did against Vera, and a knockout coming shortly thereafter.



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