By Scott Gilfoid: Newly crowned WBO middleweight champion Andy Lee (34-2, 24 KOs) expects to be back in the ring in March of 2015 in a fight against Billy Joe Saunders (21-0, 11 KOs) that could wind up taking place in Ireland.
Lee’s dream is to defend his title in Ireland in front of his Irish fans. Whether that will actually happen is another thing. The fight would likely make a ton of money if it takes place in the UK in one of the larger arenas. It’s hard to say whether Lee can pull in enough fans in Ireland for him to make a ton of money.
Lee stopped Matt Korobov by a 6th round knockout earlier this month to pick up the WBO 160 pound title. For Lee, it was his second straight fight in which he was behind on the scorecards at the time of the stoppage.
Lee was trailing 50-45, 48-47 and 50-45. It’s hard to say what the second judge was thinking to score the fight so closely at 48-47, because Lee was getting totally dominated through the first five rounds, and I didn’t see one round that he won.
The judge that had it close was giving Lee rounds where he was getting totally dominated, and that’s really, really scary to have scoring like that. In Lee’s previous bout against John Jackson, Lee was losing 39-36, 39-36 and 38-36 through the first four rounds of the fight.
Lee was able to score a knockout in the 5th round. If not for that, Jackson likely would have worn Lee out and scored a knockout of his own, because he was hitting Lee at will in the fight with huge shots.
“That’s my dream, to win a world title and then defend it in Ireland, in Limerick or Dublin,” Lee said via ESPN.com. “That’s one of my ambitions, to become champion and defend it in Ireland.”
Lee will probably get his way in terms of the venue for the fight, because he’s the A-side and that means he’ll likely have things his way in negotiating the fight.
With the way Lee has looked in his last two fights, and how he looked against Anthony Fitzgerald and Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, I could definitely see Lee getting out-boxed in this fight and losing to Saunders. With Lee, you pretty much only need to watch out for his right hook.
If you can stay on your feet for the full distance then you have a great chance of out-boxing Lee. Korobov made the mistake of getting sloppy against Lee in the 6th when he exchanged with him in close. That’s why he was tagged by Lee. If Korobov had stayed disciplined by fighting on the outside and keeping his guard up to block Lee’s right hook like he’d been doing, then he would have easily won the fight.
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