(Photo credit: Frank Warren) By Scott Gilfoid: WBO middleweight champion Andy Lee (34-2-1, 24 KOs) and his opponent Billy Joe Saunders (22-0, 12 KOs) both successfully weighed in on Friday for their big fight on Saturday night at the Manchester Arena in Manchester, UK. The 6’2” Lee looked good and not weight drained in coming in at 159.75 pounds.
This is how Lee looks when he steps foot inside the ring, and that tells you he did not have to drain down in weight a dramatic amount of weight like we see with some fighters like Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. I wish I could say the same thing for the 26-year-old Saunders. He looked badly drained in coming in right at the limit at 160lbs.
Frankly, I was surprised Saunders even made weight, because he weighed in at 173lbs for his last fight against Yoann Bloyer. That is not a typo. Saunders weighed in at 173 pounds. One only guesses how much weight he put on after he rehydrated.
As big as Saunders was for that fight, he reminded me of how Paul Smith looked after he missed weight for his fight against Andre Ward last Summer, and Williams is a super middleweight. I think Saunders is a super middleweight masquerading as a middleweight in order to have a Canelo-like weight advantage over his opponents.
As painfully thin as Saunders was during today’s weigh-in, I think he’s going to rehydrate like mad overnight and come into the fight in the 180s. Being that big will help Saunders in the first six rounds, as he’ll have a considerable Julio Cesar Chavez Jr-like weight advantage over Lee. But I can’t see Saunders being able to fight hard for more than six rounds before gassing out badly in the last six rounds of the contest.
WBO MIDDLEWEIGHT WORLD CHAMPIONSHIP
Andy Lee – 159 ¾ Pounds
Billy Joe Saunders – 160 Pounds
Ireland’s Lee (34-2-1, 24 KOs) will make the first defense of his 160-pound title against England’s Saunders (22-0, 12 KOs), the WBO’s No. 1 middleweight contender, this Saturday, Dec. 19, live on SHO EXTREME (5 p.m. ET/PT) from Manchester Arena.
The SHOWTIME BOXING INTERNATIONAL offering of the BoxNation telecast will feature analysis from SHOWTIME® boxing experts Brian Custer, Al Bernstein, Paulie Malignaggi and guest analyst and WBA Middleweight World Champion Daniel Jacobs. An encore presentation of the bout will air on SHO EXTREME later that evening at 9 p.m. ET/PT.
ANDY LEE:
“This is it – fight time tomorrow night. All the training is done, my weight is perfect and I’m ready for Billy Joe Saunders.
“I’ve won this world title and I’m not letting it go. Saunders will put up a good fight, but this belt is staying with me.”
BILLY JOE SAUNDERS
“All the talking is done. We’ve talked and talked for as long as I can remember, now we just need to let our fists do the talking.
“Just a few more hours now until there’s a new WBO World Middleweight Champion of the World from Hatfield, England.”
If I’m Lee, I would take it easy in the first six rounds by boxing Saunders from the outside and looking to nail him with right hooks each time he gets a little overeager. In the second half of the bout, I would turn up the heat on Saunders in a huge way by making him work hard for the full three minutes of every round in order to tire him out.
I think Saunders is fighting outside of his natural weight class by boiling down from the higher weights to fight at 160 against middleweights, and you can only do that for a certain amount of time and against lesser opposition. A fighter can boil down and beat the flawed guys like the ones that Saunders has been feasting on during his career, but when you fight some of the best, you’ve got to be in your natural weight division to win those types of fights.
That is why we see guys like Chavez Jr. losing when they fought fighters in their natural weight division. Saunders is in a bad position to where he almost has to boil down to fight at middleweight, because if he tries to fight at super middleweight or light heavyweight, where he arguably should be fighting given his weight, I don’t think he has the punching power to compete against those guys.
The Lee vs. Saunders fight will be on TV on Showtime Extreme in the United States on Saturday.
Unbeaten WBO junior middleweight champion Liam Smith (21-0-1, 11 KOs) weighed in right at the limit at 154lbs for his title defense against little known Jimmy Kelly (16-0, 7 KOs). For his part, Kelly weighed in at 153lbs. Smith, 27, recently won the vacant WBO 154lb title last October with a 7th round knockout win over American John Thompson.
It was kind of an unusual fight due to the World Boxing Organization giving the unproven Thompson a high ranking and not putting arguably much more talented junior middleweights like the Charlo brothers, Demetrius Andrade, Austin Trout and Vanes Martirosyan up there high in their ratings. It was the perfect storm that led to Smith being matched up against John Thompson instead of talents like the names mentioned above.
I would like to think that Liam Smith would do well against guys like Jermall and Jermell Charlo, but I just can’t. I think the Charlo brothers would have toyed with Smith if that had been them I the ring with him rather than the flawed and badly inexperienced Thompson.
As such, it’s difficult for me to see Smith as the real WBO champion. Nevertheless, in a way it rather shows the level of the WBO’s champions. When you go down the line for their various champions in different weight divisions, many of the champions are not who I consider even close to being the best guys in their respective divisions.
Official weights for Saturday’s card at the Manchester Arena:
Andy Lee 159.75 vs. Billy Joe Saunders 160
Liam Smith 154 vs. Jimmy Kelly 153
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