It’ll end in a knockout, insist Lee and Gibbs

BOTH Andy Lee and Willie ‘The Gladiator’ Gibbs promised to end Saturday night’s Ladbrokes.com showdown at the UL Arena by knockout when they squared up before hundreds of fight fans at a public training session in Limerick yesterday.

A special ring was erected in the Parkway Shopping Centre and RTÉ’s Marty Morrissey was there to get the fans worked up. If Gibbs was expecting a hostile reception in Andy Lee’s home town then he would have been disappointed as he shared the limelight with Limerick’s favourite son, posing for photographs and signing autographs.

But he knew only too well that, come the first bill on Saturday night the atmosphere will change dramatically.

“I know that if I am to beat Andy Lee in his home town I am probably going to have to knock him out or else beat him down so badly that they can’t say no,” the Philadelphia danger man said.

“I would expect a hostile reception but I have been through those situations before — where you go to another man’s country and you have to win by knockout — and that has matured me as a fighter.

“I have watched Andy Lee. I know who I am going in against. His big weakness is the fact that he has just lost and that is the biggest weakness that a man can have.

“I was very surprised when they chose someone as good as me for his next fight after that defeat. They have chosen the wrong fighter to come back against. Somebody has made a big mistake this time.”

Andy Lee did not agree, pointing out that he had trained harder for this fight than for any other.

“I think Gibbs is the hardest opponent I have fought so far so, even though I lost my last fight, I keep stepping up in class.

“He says he will knock me out but let him try and if he tries there will be more openings for me. It will be a good fight for the fans. I say I am going to knock him out so we will see what happens.”

Meanwhile legendary trainer Emanuel Steward insisted “Andy is back on track,” adding: “We want to keep fighting quality guys. We could have got an easy fight for Limerick but we don’t want that. Andy is a world- class guy. OK we lost a fight but it was not because the guy was better. Andy was ahead on points and he scored a knockdown but he just was too weak and he did not have enough energy from being sick.

“It was important to continue with the quality guys and Gibbs would have been the kind of guy we would have been fighting next then we would like to fight Randy Griffith after this — then maybe Howard Eastman — but Andy is going to stay on the same level. In 12 months time he will still be fighting for the (world) title.

As regards the stoppage against Brian Vera Manny, Steward said it was embarrassing for both himself and Lee because Vera was not nearly as good as Lee who had his man on the floor and was ahead on points when the fight was stopped.

“But Andy was very weak because he had a bad cold the week before — he only weighed 158 lbs which is so light for him,” he said. “We told him to just take it easy but he said ‘it got the best of me I just wanted to go all out and put on a show’ and he ended up getting tired and that’s what happened.”

“Maybe I should have cancelled the fight but Andy did not want to. He was very weak and the weight will tell you that. He has never been that little.

“We offered the guy $250,000 (€158,094) — he made $15,000 for that fight — for a rematch but he said he does not want to fight Andy. He’s scared. He tried Jermaine Tailor and that didn’t happen, he tried Kelly Pavlic and that didn’t happen so he has nobody to fight and Andy is getting on with his career.”