by Allan Fox: Middleweight contender Andy Lee (28-2, 20 KO’s) is just one of many fighters that will now be looking for a new mentor/trainer now that Emanuel Steward has passed away. The 28-year-old Lee has been with Steward for many years now, and he’s lived with him and trained at his Kronk gym.

Steward took a personal interest in trying to develop Lee, who was an amateur star from Ireland. However, things didn’t pan out as Steward had hoped, as Lee has suffered disappointing losses to Brian Vera and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. that have kept him from making it to the big time.

You can’t blame Lee for the loss to Chavez Jr, though, because the 180 pound Chavez Jr. was so much heavier than Lee in that fight. Would things have been different had Chavez Jr. been in the 160s for that fight? I don’t know but I do believe that Lee would have done a lot better if the weights were about the same.

With Steward now gone, Lee is going to have to find his own way in the middleweight division with a new trainer to help get him back into title contention. Lee hasn’t fought since losing to Chavez Jr. last June, and it’s unknown when Lee will be back in the ring again. He doesn’t have a fight scheduled now, and he needs a lot of work when he does get back in the ring. With his straight up style of fighting, Lee is going to be vulnerable against a lot of the shorter, more compact middleweights with power.

Lee can’t continue to try and slug it out with these types of fighters, because we’ve seen in his losses to Chavez Jr. and Vera that he breaks down quickly when he goes to war. Lee is going to have to become more of a boxer/puncher like Wladimir Klitschko if he’s to make anything out of his career. Lee can’t continue to try and slug it with his opponents because he’s not built for that. When Lee had to struggle to beat Craig McEwan last year it became pretty clear that he doesn’t have the chin or the defense to be brawling his opponents.

This is why it was surprising that Lee wasn’t following the instructions of Steward during his fight with Chavez Jr. last June. Steward kept telling Lee to box Chavez Jr, but Lee continued to slug it out and it eventually cost him the fight. Granted, the ring was small and it was almost impossible for him to get away from the cruiserweight-sized Chavez Jr., but he still could have done a much better job than he did in trying to elude Chavez Jr.