By Scott Gilfoid: WBO middleweight champion Andy Lee (34-2-1, 24 KOs) faces #1 WBO mandatory challenge Billy Joe Saunders (22-0, 12 KOs) on December 19th at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, England. Lee, 31, looked horrible in his last fight against Peter Quillin last April in getting dropped twice and then having to settle for a 12 round draw in this non-title fight. Quillin failed to make weight for the fight, so Lee’s WBO title wasn’t on the line.
Lee’s career has been an up and down affair with him doing well for stretches at a time, but he’s also failed big time in knockout losses to journeyman Brian Vera and former WBC middleweight champion Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. For this reason it was kind of strange to learn that Lee fancies himself as a fighter with equal or better punching power than IBF/IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs).
The obvious question is why doesn’t Lee have a knockout record as impressive as Golovkin if he really does have punching power as good as Golovkin? I mean, you could you imagine Golovkin losing to Chavez Jr. and Vera? Those guys would have been KO victims to Golovkin, and that kind of tells you that Lee is dreaming about him having equal or better power to Golovkin.
“I think I punch as hard, if not harder, than him. Just look at the one-punch knockouts. Look at mine, compared to his,” Lee said via thesun.ie. “His are an accumulation of heavy, hard punches. I can finish fights with one punch.”
I think it’s painfully obvious that Lee is dreaming. He doesn’t have the kind of punching power that Golovkin has, because if he did we’d see the results in terms of wins, knockouts and zero losses. Golovkin does have one punch power. Golovkin just doesn’t choose to sit down on his punches with each shot he throws. Unlike Lee, Golovkin varies the power he puts on his shots. He’ll throw with medium punching power for a while, and then all of a sudden, he’ll load up with everything and drop his opponents.
We saw Golovkin load up on a big left hook in the 4th round against David Lemieux in their fight on October 17th of this month. We also saw Golovkin load up on a big left hook in the 2nd round of his fight against Willie Monroe Jr. earlier this year. Golovkin dropped Monroe hard with the left hook he hit him with. Lee is too skinny and scrawny to generate the same kind of power that Golovkin possesses in my view.
Instead of worrying about how his punching power compares to Golovkin, Lee needs to worry about his fight against Saunders on 12/19, because that’s a fight that Lee could very well lose. In fact, I’m predicting that Lee will lose this fight.
I see Saunders as a better fighter than him, and I think Lee is going to fall behind quickly in this fight. By the later rounds, I see Lee needing a knockout in order to win. But in this case, I don’t see Lee being able to get a fight-saving knockout like he did against Matt Karobov and John Jackson.
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