Andy Lee: I want to be remembered as a great champion

By Boxing News - 04/07/2015 - Comments

1-Andy Lee wins WBO titleBy Scott Gilfoid: WBO middleweight champion Andy Lee (34-2, 24 KOs) will be making his toughest fight in quite some time when he defends his WBO strap this Saturday night against the speedy fast and very powerful unbeaten Peter Quillin (31-0, 22 KOs) at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

Lee has a tough task ahead of him against Quillin because the American fighter can both slug and box. He’s equally talented in both areas, so he can kind of pick and choose how he wants to deal with the 6’2” Lee.

Lee, 30, says he’d like to defend his title three times successfully and then retire from boxing as one of the great ones. Unfortunately if Lee only defends his WBO title three times, he’s hardly going to be remembered as a great one. Beating Quillin definitely won’t be a big enough win to make Lee great.

Even if Lee does beat Quillin, which I have serious doubts about, Lee will need to defend his WBO title against #1 WBO Billy Joe Saunders in his next fight. That’s not a fight that will make Lee great if he wins because Saunders has little name recognition in the United States, and he’s not seen as the next Marvin Hagler or Bernard Hopkins.

Honestly, for Lee to be seen as a great middleweight, he’s going to need to defeat Miguel Cotto, Gennady Golovkin, and then perhaps some junior middleweights like Dementrius Andrade, Erislandy Las and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. If Lee beat all those guys, then he’ll be seen as a special fighter. But it’s going to take more than three fights for him to face all of those guys, and I’m not sure that Lee can beat any of them. I mean, I can’t see him beating any of them so I don’t think Lee is going to be able to retire and be remembered as a great champion at 160.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1QkvKvaYbiI

“I don’t want to hang around too long,” Lee said via the Dailystar.co.uk about him sticking around the sport for too long. “I’d like to defend my belt a few times, be remembered as a great champion and go out on a high.”

I think Lee’s dreams of being remembered as a great champion will be shattered this Saturday night with him losing to Quillin. It’s not news to anyone that Lee fades late in his fights, and that he runs out of gas when pressured. If Quillin puts a lot of pressure on Lee and guards against his dangerous right hook, then I can see Quillin having a good chance of scoring a stoppage in this fight.

Lee needs to prove that he can start fast in the fight and not be put in a situation where he’s desperate to win like we’ve seen in Lee’s last two fights against Matt Korobov and John Jackson. Lee was trailing in both fights when he stopped them. The thing is if Quillin gets ahead of Lee on Saturday, I can see him fighting smart and coasting to a 12 round decision over Lee. Quillin isn’t going to take chances with Lee if he knows the guy will be fighting in a desperate manner.



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