‘Something tells me the stars are aligning and this is my time’

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.

Down below, the famous Bellagio fountains swirl into life and the warm December sun glints back off the huge replica Eiffel Tower in front of the ‘Paris’ hotel.

Some 45 floors beneath his feet is the arena where Lee will face Matt Korobov for the vacant WBO middleweight title tonight.

He admits defeat might well send him into retirement at the age of 30. But, despite such high Vegas stakes, he seems disarmingly relaxed. “I dunno,” he grins. “It’s just a place isn’t it?”

For a European boxer, Lee is something of a Vegas veteran. He estimates he is nearing his 20th visit — three of those have been for fights, all won. He first set foot on this particular corner of the Nevada desert almost 10 years ago today. He was a guest of his former trainer Emanuel Steward, in town for Vitali Klitschko’s fight against Danny Williams in December 2004. “I was running around with three disposable cameras,” he says. “Filled them all up with pictures of me alongside every boxer I met.”

Now it is Lee who is asked for pictures, but that is not the only change in the decade since his first trip to Sin City.

In October 2012, Lee had to cope with the loss of Steward, who died after suffering from diverticulitis. Only four months earlier, the Hall of Fame trainer was in the corner for Lee’s failed world title shot against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. Lee would have become Steward’s 42nd – and last – world champion. But it was not to be as Chavez stopped the man from Limerick in the seventh round.

But it is from such adversity that Lee now draws strength. He said: “It feels like everything that has gone before – the Chavez fight, everything – has happened for a reason and got me to this point. I have all the experience for it now. I wasn’t good enough for it before in terms of being a fighter and maybe I needed to learn more. If it had happened then maybe it wouldn’t have lasted but now it’s going to happen, I’m going to win.

“I don’t want to call it destiny but something tells me the stars are aligning and this is my time. There are just strange little things that have given me that feeling.”

Lee goes on, gesturing towards an imposing, faux-Roman building just the other side of the fountains.

“Look over there – that’s Caesars Palace,” he says.

“That’s where Tommy Hearns and Sugar Ray Leonard fought for the first time in 1981 – and of course Emanuel Steward was Hearns’ trainer.

“That was the fight that got my trainer Adam Booth into boxing, he was taken to the cinema to watch it and that’s where it all started for him.

“He might never have even started boxing had it not been for watching that fight over there in that building.

“Now, here he is, with me, one of Emanuel Steward’s fighters, about to fight for a world title and we can see the place from our balcony.”

You sense his bond with Booth, who guided David Haye to the world heavyweight title and George Groves to the brink of world honours, is also to thank for his confidence in this fight.

Following Steward’s death, Lee was left without his mentor and a trainer. He said: “When Manny passed away I needed a new trainer and I did not think there was anybody better for me than Adam. He has improved every aspect of my boxing. For me, Adam Booth is the best trainer in the world.”

In many ways, the relationship between Lee, at the time a young rookie, and Steward, the fabled old trainer, and the one between he and Booth sit at opposite ends of the spectrum.

But Lee says: “In a way they are different but I followed Emanuel in the same way I do Adam. Nobody could dispute his knowledge of boxing – and he was like a cult so there are similarities. Adam is a control freak but that’s the way it has to be. He’s the captain of the ship and he’s like a cult leader. It’s good and I’m proud of it. The most important relationship in boxing is between the coach and the boxer – they have to be very good.

“In his cult, everything he tells me to do I do, everything he tells to me to eat or drink I will. I follow him with blind faith because there’s always a good reason behind it.”

And there is good reason behind taking this fight with Korobov, a man once considered the finest amateur on the globe.

Bookmakers here in Las Vegas don’t give Lee much of a chance against the undefeated Russian, who is the ‘home’ fighter, at the Cosmopolitan tonight.

But despite being 18 months Korobov’s junior, Lee is vastly more experienced as a pro while 23 knock-out wins highlight the power carried by the London-born southpaw.

“There’s no doubting his ability – we definitely aren’t,” Lee says with a shrug. But I don’t believe he’s ever been to the trenches, he’s never really dug deep as a pro and he seems to lose concentration. You don’t see him sustaining attacks. I have done all of those things.”

All of those and more. This will be Lee’s 36th fight as a professional and his second for a world title. Victory will bring him many more nights in plush penthouses with balconies bigger than your average Limerick boxing gym.

But defeat, he says, could leave him staring into the abyss. “I think this is my last chance. If I don’t win this I’m not sure I can face that long road back to the top.

“But I feel like I’m on the brink of something – and I feel ready.”