Andy Lee, the highly touted Irish middleweight prospect, is to fight in Limerick, his home town, in a couple of weeks. This is of interest for a few reasons: 1) Lee is widely considered a "blue chip" prospect. He's 14-0 with 11 KOs and has shown considerable skill and power to date. 2) This will apparently be the first ever professional boxing card in Limerick. 3) The undercard includes quite a few of the more promising Irish prospects. Lee has clearly struck a chord with Irish boxing fans. His fights are shown live on RTE (the state TV broadcaster) but even so the 2,200 tickets for his Limerick fight sold out in 30 minutes. And that's without an opponent named. Which brings me to the point of this posting. There's only two weeks left till the fight and no opponent has been named. Does anyone know who it will be? As an aside, in a period where boxing is largely absent from free TV in much of the world, this is shaping up to be a golden age for televised boxing in Ireland. Not only can the Irish public get all the fights shown in Britain, RTE seems to have decided to back boxing in a big way. All of the best known Irish fighters currently have their fights broadcase live and for free, including Lee, John Duddy, and the recently defeated Bernard Dunne. If any of the next tier of prospects can make even a small scale name for themselves, they'll probably end up with their fights broadcast too. The good news for anyone in the rest of the world with an interest in any of these fightersis that RTE also puts the fights out for free over the internet. They also show the undercards if you want to see if any of the lower profile Irish prospects have what it takes. The Lee fight is on the 2nd of February.
Great news Marco. you should find Ardy's thread 'Irish boxing' on here, and join in. You seem like an educated poster, cheers.
Well, I doubt if it's going to be anyone who represents a big step up, given that no opponent has been named with a little over two weeks to go. That said, Lee is a prospect. A very good prospect, but still a prospect. He's had 14 fights. Jermain Taylor's 15th opponent was the less than stellar, to put it mildly, Marcos Primera. Kelly Pavlik's 15th opponent was Edson Madrid, a guy who had won only 4 of his 8 fights and was coming off two losses. With all due respect to any man who steps into the ring, the latter is a lot closer in boxing ability to "the panhandler on the corner of MLK and 5th" than anyone Lee is likely to fight at this stage. If you are a Pavlik or Taylor fan I can see how the constant talking up of Lee could get irritating. Whatever Steward says about his man, there is no way that Lee should be getting into the ring with people of that caliber just yet. He needs time to develop. Lee is a genuinely exciting prospect. Arguably he's the second best looking prospect in boxing at the moment, behind only Gamboa. But looking top quality in your first 14 fights doesn't make you a champion. As Lee slowly steps up the quality of his opposition, we will see just how good he really is. He's certainly active enough - 8 fights a year so far - which is a good sign.
One of the reasons many top prospects, like Lee, never get beyond that, is because they are rushed. Lee is a great, promising fighter. Let him fight a few bums to get some much needed experiance. Far too many supposed next P4Pers have been rushed into fights they shouldn't have taken, and lost. Let's hope Lee is not one of those. He's a great fighter, and I hope he can mature properly. Putting him in against good fighters at this stage in his career will probably make sure he doesn't reach his full potential.
Yeah, it's too bad that when a fighter is steadily brought up through the ranks everyone on internet forums goes beserk whining and moaning that that fighter is ducking everyone! atsch
I dont believe Lees opponent for Limerick will be anyone too dangerous as Andy is expected to fight three weeks later on the Klitscho/Ibrabimov undercard.
