By Scott Gilfoid: After fighting to a 12 round draw against Peter Quillin in his first defense of his title last April, WBO middleweight champion Andy Lee (34-2-1, 24 KOs) will be moving on to make a defense of his title against his #1 WBO Billy Joe Saunders (21-0, 11 KOs) on September 5th at a still to be determined venue in London, UK.
There’s obviously still unfinished business for Lee against Quillin, but it looks like Lee has decided to go in another direction rather than take a big risk against the hard hitting Quillin in a second bout.
The Lee-Saunders fight still hasn’t been confirmed as of yet, but it’s looking like it will be taking place on that date on September 5th. Saunders has a stay busy fight next month on July 11th against an opponent still to be determined in Manchester. He’s going to have to win that fight to move forward to get the fight against Lee.
Saunders recently defeated Chris Eubank Jr. by a 12 round split decision last November in a nice payday fight for the 25-year-old Saunders. Eubank Jr. probably could have won the fight had he started his offense earlier. He waited too long and by the time he did start fighting hard, Saunders had already built up a substantial lead in the fight.
“Yeah I think it deserves that, it’s a big fight,” Saunders promoter Frank Warren said via IFL TV. “It’s a great fight. I mean, you look at Andy Lee and what he has done over the last few years. It’s marvelous what he’s done when you think he’s gone into every fight as the underdog and the old equalizer has taken everybody out.”
Lee was quite lucky to get a draw against Quillin, because Lee hit the deck twice in the fight in getting knocked down once in the 1st and another time in the 3rd. If Quillin had any kind of finishing skills, he would have jumped on Lee and stopped him in either of those rounds. But instead, Quillin treated Lee like a loaded gun and played it safe to allow him to get out of the 1st and 3rd. Quillin found out later in the fight what a mistake it was for him to allow Lee to stay in the fight, as he was dropped in the 7th by the Irish fighter. Quillin gassed out in the second half of the fight and did very little to win the championship rounds.
WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin has shown a lot of interest in wanting to fight Lee in a unification bout, but Lee decided to take the Saunders fight rather than get inside the ring with Golovkin and risk getting knocked out.
Lee saved his career by scoring knockouts in his fights against Matt Korobov and John Jackson in fights he was trailing in 2014. Those guys could have easily won if they’d only kept their guard up to protect against Lee’s right hook, which has become the weapon that he’s fallen back on to bail him out of tight situations.
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