Lee ready for battle after tussle with Taylor

ANDY LEE goes into his third professional fight in Memphis tonight confident he can live with the best in the middleweight division.

The unbeaten Limerick southpaw fights a decidedly average-looking journeyman in William Johnson, a Mississippi boxer with six wins, six defeats and a draw on his pro record, including a 39-second knockout defeat to Derry’s John Duddy in New York 19 months ago.

While he will take nothing for granted against the 25-year-old, the calibre of Lee’s preparation for the contest clearly has the former Irish Olympian targeting more meaningful contests.

Lee, who’s just turned 22, has spent the last six weeks in a training camp working with WBC world middleweight champion Jermain Taylor, who also fights in Memphis this weekend against Ronald “Winky” Wright.

Taylor’s management sought out legendary Kronk Gym trainer Emanuel Steward to prepare their man for southpaw Wright.

And just as Lee helped heavyweight challenger Wladimir Klitschko from Ukraine prepare for lefty champion Chris Byrd in April, the Irish man has been sparring constantly in Detroit ahead of the middleweight titleholder’s latest defence.

“Some of the sessions were pretty intense,” Lee said. “We had some good spars and it was a real competition every day in there; we’d get the best out of each other and everyone stepped up their game.

“Taylor’s a good boxer, got a very good jab, and I enjoyed sparring with him.

“Anytime you can spar with a world champion is a good opportunity to gauge where you’re at and it was nip and tuck.

“Neither of us got the better of the other one and we had a lot of respect for each other.”

Taylor, unbeaten in 25 fights, underlined that fact when he said of the Kronk Gym: “Everybody in the gym is hungry. “When I was a kid, I used to go to my gym, and everybody used to be like: ‘Who’s king of the gym?’ And it’s the same over here at Kronk. Everybody wants to be that man.

“Kronk is a gym that builds champions. I watched those boys spar the other day, and it was like a championship bout. Everybody works so hard. I love being in the Kronk atmosphere.”

Steward, the man who has created that famed Kronk atmosphere, added: “This ain’t no place to try and be somebody. If you come in here with your head up in the clouds, you’re in the wrong place.

“So Jermain comes in, and he boxes the first time with Andy Lee, who’s one of the stars at our gym, and they had a real rough and spirited workout. It was nip and tuck.”

“I’m not used to that,” Taylor told Steward afterwards and the trainer told him: “You’ve got to realise that you were taking on the middleweight champion of this gym in Andy Lee. This is his turf right here, and you being the middleweight champion of the world, you’ve got to earn that respect here.”

Lee, who has also been working with former world welterweight champion Milton McCrory in the build-up to his bout with Johnson tonight, was originally lined up to fight on the Taylor/Wright undercard but boxing politics saw some of the promoters’ other charges take precedence on the showpiece card of the weekend.

The Irishman will not lose out on showcasing his talent for a wider audience, though, as his fight is scheduled for broadcast on cable sports network ESPN.

And when he steps into the ring it will mark the end of a frustrating few weeks outside the ropes for the Limerick man.

“I was meant to fight at the end of May,” Lee said, “but that fell through and it knocked me off my schedule. I don’t really care who I’m fighting or on what card, I just want to box. Hopefully after this I’ll have two fights in July and that will get me back on schedule.

“For now, though, I’m still learning and still improving and I’m in the right place to do that.”