America At Large:Andy Lee will undertake his final, Stateside sparring session today, and by nightfall the 23-year-old Limerick middleweight and Kronk Gym assistant trainer Joey Gamache will be winging their way to Belfast.
The plan calls for Lee and Gamache, the former world lightweight champion, to spend a few days in the North, relocating to Dublin in the middle of next week in advance of Andy's August 25th date at The Point, where his bout against American Brad Austin will be a featured attraction on Brian Peters' Bernard Dunne v Kiko Martinez bill.
Lee's trainer and manager, Emanuel Steward, will remain at his camp in the Pocono Mountains of Pennsylvania, where he is training world champions Jermain Taylor and Kermit Cintron for September title defences, but he plans to fly to Dublin next Thursday.
Steward says Lee's first professional appearance in Ireland will also be his last in a scheduled eight-rounder.
"This will be Andy's last eight-round fight," said Steward. "Before the end of the year he'll be fighting in Madison Square Garden, and then, hopefully, next year in Chicago, Boston and Detroit.
"And by the end of 2008," vowed Steward, "he will be fighting for the middleweight title."
"In any art, the prodigy presents a problem," wrote the great AJ Liebling in The Sweet Science. "Given too easy a problem, he gets slack, but asked too hard a question early, he becomes discouraged. Finding a middle course is particularly difficult in the prize ring. The fighter must be confirmed in the belief that he can lick anybody in the world and at the same time be restrained from testing this belief on a subject too advanced for his attainments."
"Andy has had 10 fights in less than two years, but his education goes way beyond 10 fights," explained Steward, who has carefully mapped out Lee's career trajectory. "He's been at the best boxing training camps in the world. When I'm working as an HBO commentator he goes around with me, so he's been able to soak up the big-fight atmosphere. And when we're back home in Detroit, we're constantly watching fight films, so he's learning all the time.
"Because I manage Andy in addition to training him, I can be more effective in that regard," said Steward. "The fights Jermain has had recently, for instance, I never would have picked those opponents, so I've just tried to do what I had to do to get him through. But with Andy Lee's fights, I've picked the opponents very carefully, not so much based on how good or bad the guy is, but in terms of his style and the problems he presents, and what Andy can take out of the fight. I can take a guy who's 14-0 or another guy with eight wins and 20 losses. It's a matter of what Andy's going to learn from the experience."
Austin, the current nominated opponent, is 8-3-1, and went the distance in losing to undefeated Buddy McGirt Jr in his last outing. (The arrangement is contingent on Austin's ability to secure a passport this week.)
"In the past it's never been a big deal to me where I fight," said Lee. "Even fighting in Madison Square Garden didn't awe me. It's just been a matter of whether I box well or not.
"But fighting at home will be a bit different. There will be some additional pressure, but I look forward to it. It's a good challenge, and I just hope I put on a good show."
Although he boxed in Dublin on numerous occasions in his amateur days, Lee has set foot in The Point only twice. He was Peters' guest when Dunne defended his European 122lb title against Reidar Walstad there two months ago, and two years ago he was there to watch the father of his girlfriend, Maud, Daniel Reardon, perform in The Ha'penny Bridge.
That puts him one up on Steward, whose only visit to The Point came a dozen years ago when he worked the corner for Lennox Lewis' redemptive, four-round stoppage of Australian heavyweight Justin Fortune.
Should Austin's travel arrangements be derailed by Homeland Security, it will be left to Peters to come up with a replacement suitable to Steward.
But, said Lee, "I'm going to have a lot of supporters there. I know Bernard is the main attraction, but I've got a lot of family and friends coming as well."
With Taylor facing southpaws (Winky Wright, Kassim Ouma and Corey Spinks) in his last three outings, the left-handed Lee regularly sparred with the middleweight champion.
Since Taylor will face a right-hander, Kelly Pavlik, on September 29th, Lee's work with him has been more limited since camp opened a few weeks ago. But in the Poconos Andy has sparred with Cintron, as well as a pair of young American Olympic hopefuls, Domonick Dolton and Jonathan Nelson. When we visited him there last weekend, he went five spirited rounds with Steward's cruiserweight Jonathan Banks and more than held his own.
"I expect I'll spar for a few days in Belfast," said Lee. "I know Harry Hawkins has a number of fighters there, but Damien McCann is arranging everything up there."
Jermain Taylor, who has held the 160lb (middleweight) championship since his back-to-back 2005 wins over Bernard Hopkins, has already vowed that next month's defence against Pavlik will be his last as a middleweight.
Increasingly beset by weight problems, Taylor intends to campaign thereafter at super-middleweight, a plan which fits in neatly with Steward's own scheme, since it will put both the WBC and WBO titles up for grabs.
"That's been our plan all along," said Steward. "By the end of 2008, Andy Lee will be the middleweight champion of the world."
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