Andy Lee to face Billy Joe Saunders on September 19th

By Boxing News - 06/21/2015 - Comments

By Scott Gilfoid: On September 19th, 31-year-old WBO middleweight title holder Andy Lee (34-2-1, 24 KOs) will be defending his WBO title against his #1 challenger Billy Joe Saunders (21-0, 11 KOs) at the Thomond Park Stadium in Limerick, Ireland. It’s not a great fight as far as the U.S boxing fans go, but it’s a match-up that will interest the UK fans.

In reality, this is more of a contender fight rather than a champion defending his title against a challenger.

Lee isn’t considered the No.1 champion or even the No.2, No.3 or No.4 champion in the middleweight division. He’s more like the No.5 guy below #1 Gennady Golovkin, #2 Miguel Cotto, #3 David Lemieux, and #4 Daniel Jacobs. It’s really sad that there’s that many world champions at 160, because it just seems so wrong to have five champions for one weight division. That’s like having five Super Bowl Champions in the NFL or five World Series Champions in Major League Baseball. It makes no sense at all, and it just trivializes having a world title.

Saunders, 25, has been waiting for his title shot for a while now, and he’s finally gotten it. One can only hope that he doesn’t fall apart on the big stage and mess up. He’s not much of a puncher, and his stamina is very questionable. We saw that in his recent win over Chris Eubanks Jr. Saunders got the decision win, but he really gassed out at the end and showed very little in the way of power.

It was just a lot of slapping shots from Saunders all night long. He was fortunate that the professional fights are no longer 15 rounds because he would have lost to Eubanks Jr. if they were.

Lee recently fought to a 12 round draw against an overweight Peter Quillin earlier this year in April. Lee looked terrible in the early rounds in getting dropped twice, but he then came back and put Quillin on the canvas and was able to salvage a draw.

“I have no problem travelling to Ireland,” Saunders said via Skysports.com. “Like Andy Lee, I come from a traveler background and would have fans showing up in their thousands. Andy Lee is strong and game but he’s been on the floor in his last three fights and is coming to the end.”

I have no doubts that Saunders can win this fight if he stays on his feet and doesn’t wind up getting destroyed by one of Lee’s right hooks. The southpaw Lee has depended on his right hook to bail him out of recent fights against John Jackson and Matt Karobov. In both fights, Lee was trailing and appeared to be on his way to a defeat.

Saunders doesn’t punch like Jackson and Karobov through, so it’s going to be hard for him get Lee in any kind of trouble. The problem with Saunders being a weak puncher is that it means he’s probably going to need to go the full 12 rounds for him to get the victory. With Lee’s punching power, it’s not easy to go 12 rounds with him because the odds are in his favor that he’s going to land one of his big shots sooner or later.



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