By Sean McDaniel: HBO will be showing a middleweight battle between two decent but flawed Irish middleweights Andy Lee (24-1, 18 KO’s) and John Duddy (29-2, 18 KO’s) March 12th at the Foxwoods Resort Casino, in Mashantucket, Connecticut. This will be part of the undercard for the main event between WBC middleweight champion Sergio Martinez and Sergeii Dzinziruk. By showing Lee and Duddy going at it, there is hope that the winner of this fight will then be the next opponent for the Martinez-Dzinziruk winner.

This is kind of a stretch, because there are clearly better middleweights out there than either Lee and Duddy for Martinez to fight in the near future. However, given that boxing is about perception, the casual boxing fan will perhaps be just as entertained seeing Martinez drill to pieces the winner of the Duddy-Lee fight than they would to see Martinez destroy higher ranked fighters like Matthew Macklin, Darren Barker, Fernando Guerrero, Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. or David Lemieux.

Duddy has been around for awhile, having fought against guys like Chavez, Michael Median and Billy Lyell. Duddy was beaten by Lyell and Chavez convincingly. The rest of Duddy’s wins have come against 2nd tier fighters not really worth mentioning. It was figured that Duddy would be strung along against soft opposition until he was eventually put in a cash out fight against one of the champions. Unfortunately for Duddy, he was beaten by one of the fighters that he was supposed to beat in Lyell. That kind of ruined things. It’s been difficult for Duddy to get momentum with his career after that showing, and he had a chance against Chavez, but blew it by getting blown out in a 12 round decision loss in June