Promoter Frank Warren is ready to bring world championship boxing back to Ireland this summer should he arrange a deal to promote a showdown between WBO champion Andy Lee and Billy Joe Saunders. 

IT SEEMED wholly appropriate that Andy Lee landed the punch that clinched this world title, the very same belt won by Steve Collins 20 years ago, moments after he had been rocked himself.

Dressed in a black tracksuit with matching baseball cap, Andy Lee looks out from the vast balcony in his penthouse suite at the Las Vegas Cosmopolitan.

There will be a strange sense of familiarity for Andy Lee in Las Vegas on December 13 when he faces Matt Korobov, whose parents might even count the Limerick southpaw among their family friends.

Andy Lee could be set for a shock challenge for the World Boxing Organisation (WBO) middleweight title in Dublin this December.

Middleweight Darren Sutherland will bid to become the third Irish boxer to make it through to the semi-finals of the 2008 Olympics Games at the Workers Indoor Arena in Beijing at around 1pm today.