By Scott Gilfoid: Trainer Adam Booth has come up with a strategy for his fighter WBO middleweight champion Andy Lee (34-2-1, 24 KOs) to use on challenger Billy Joe Saunders (22-0, 12 KOs) this Saturday night to try to nullify his natural hand speed advantage. Booth does not want Lee to be attacking the 26-year-old Saunders or trying to put any pressure on him, because he feels this is something that won’t work for Lee because Saunders does well against fighters that come after him.
Much of Saunders’ career has seen him get the better of fighters that applied pressure on him in his fights. So instead of having Lee pressure Saunders, Booth wants Lee to focus on throwing shots each time that Saunders throws his own. In other words, Booth wants Lee to punch with Saunders so that he can take advantage of Saunders’ natural aggressiveness.
“When you’ve got someone who has the speed advantage, if you go before you won’t land because they’ll move out of position,” Booth said to skysports.com. “If you try to go after, they could be in and out before you can get your shot off. The key is punching with people with good hand speed,” Booth said.
It sounds good in theory for Lee to punch with Saunders, but I’m not sure that he’s going to be able to apply what Booth is talking about because that’s never been Lee’s style of fighting. He’s always been the type of fighter who attacks and pressures his opponents.
If you suddenly ask the 31-year-old Lee to wait until exactly the moment that Saunders throws his punches for him to get his shots off, I wouldn’t be surprised if Lee gets hurt fighting that way. If Lee waits until Saunders throws his shots, he will be potentially getting hit first by Saunders’s punches all night long.
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I do not think that is a wise thing for Lee to do because he doesn’t have the greatest chin in the world. If this was a talent like Gennady Golovkin, then I could see Booth’s instructions of punching at the same time as Saunders being sound ones. But given that Lee is an old dog trying to learn new tricks, I think Booth is sending into battle without the needed tools for him to succeed. I mean, you don’t change a fighters basic style of fighting in major title fight without first trying it out against fodder opposition over and over again to see if will work for them.
It might take Lee many fights to learn how to punch at the same time as his opponents, and he might not ever learn how to do this properly without getting totally brained in the process. However, for Booth to be sending Lee out there against Saunders to try a very new style of fighting, I think it’s wrong-headed and incredibly stupid. If my new trainer told me to do what Booth is telling Lee to do, I would dump him in the next second. I would not trust the guy. I would take a broom and chase him out of the gym and give instructions to the gym security to never let that person back in the gym again without checking with me first.
“The classic example in recent years is Amir Khan and Breidis Prescott,” Booth said. “Punch with people with fast hands. Vernon Forrest and Shane Mosley. The reason I have confidence is that Andy is very good at punching with people,” Booth continued.
If Lee was so good at punching with people, then why in the heck is he always falling behind in his fights nowadays? Lee’s opponents hit him a lot at this point in his career, and he has to use his right hand power to bail him out of situations.
I get the feeling that Booth has been watching too many historic fights on YouTube involving great fighters, and I think its planted ideas inside his head. The guys that Booth is obviously watching are fighters that have likely been fighting with their styles since day one. They learned how to punch with their opponents the moment they came out of the crib. They did not just start doing it before a major fight where it was a 50-50 situation like the Lee-Saunders fight.
I’m starting to think that this fight is going to end badly for Lee, especially if he follows the crazy ideas his trainer Booth has for him in this fight. If Lee has been wasting his entire training camp trying to adopt Booth’s vision, I see this going to badly for Lee. I think he mind end up getting royally whipped on Saturday night and wind up on his back wondering what hit him.
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