DUBLIN, Ireland – The way Emanuel Steward sees it, John Breen did him a favor by stirring up Andy Lee (13-0).
“I’ve never seen Andy pissed off at a press conference before,” said Lee’s Hall of Fame trainer. “Andy doesn’t even get mad in a fight.” The undefeated Lee is fighting Jason McKay (18-1) in Dublin on Saturday.
Lee (162 1/2) and McKay (161 1/2) were both well inside the super-middleweight limit, as well as the contractually stipulated 163 pounds, for Saturday night’s Irish title fight at Dublin’s National Stadium, and while European boxing is not usually characterized by pre-fight trash talking, McKay’s Belfast-based trainer managed to get Lee’s Irish blood boiling when he questioned his mettle.
“When I watched him in the amateurs I thought it was a stamina problem,” said Breen, “but now I realize the problem is with his heart.”
Steward noted that since coming to America as a professional, Lee has regularly sparred with the likes of the much larger Wladimir Klitschko and Johnathan Banks, as well as former middleweight champion Jermain Taylor.
“I find it kind of amusing that anyone would question Andy’s heart,” said Steward. “As an amateur he fought in tournaments all over the world. He fought Germans in Germany and Cubans in Cuba, and most of his professional fights have been in the other guy’s home town. How could he not have heart?”
At the press conference following the weigh-in, McKay repeated the charge and promised “I’ll sort him out tomorrow night.”
“He made it personal,” said Lee, who seemed uncharacteristically upset by being dissed on the eve of his first main event in his homeland.
“Andy and I have often said that Jason might be the best of all the middleweights in Ireland,” said Steward. “We have more respect for him than he does for us.”
Breen called the 18-1 McKay “the first credible opponent Andy has fought.”
Lee brings a 13-0 record to the title fight, and Breen probably made a mistake when he questioned the caliber of Lee’s prior opposition, if only because it invited scrutiny of McKay’s own. As Lee pointed out, more than half (11, to be precise) of McKay’s wins have come against boxers with losing records – “And some of them,” noted Lee, “had pretty terrible records.”
Of Lee’s 13 victims, just one (the execrable 4-8 Clinton Bonds, who was disinterred as a last-minute replacement in Memphis last May) had a sub-.500 mark. Lee’s opponents had an aggregate record of 132-48-2, while McKay’s were a McNeeleyesque 151-362-26.
Although Steward and his boxer labeled McKay “the best opponent Lee has faced to date, the bookies don’t seem impressed. Ladbrokes, a sponsor of Brian Peters’ card at the National Stadium, makes Lee a 1/3 betting favorite, and that seems generous: The Irish bookmaker Paddy Power lists Lee at 1/12.
