Spirit of the Kronk will hang in the Las Vegas air
COACHING wasn’t really on Andy Lee’s radar when he drew a veil on his successful boxing career more than two years ago.
The former world middleweight champion had other things on his mind. He had just become a father for the first time while the likeable Limerick man was in the midst of writing a compelling memoir (with Niall Kelly), Fighter, which was a revealing insight into the cruellest of sports. He was also impressing as a media analyst of the fight game.
Still, it’s hard to resist the lure of the ring, especially when you have banked the sort of knowledge that Lee did when he was a lodger in the legendary Emanuel Steward’s house in Detroit.
Last year, Paddy Donovan’s father got in touch to ask Lee’s advice about the number of professional promoters chasing his son’s signature. Between the jigs and the reels, Lee (below) ended up being trainer and manager of the promising Limerick fighter.
A few months later, Jason Quigley called him. The Donegal man’s plans to follow in Lee’s footsteps and become middleweight champion had hit a roadblock. He wanted to lean on the Limerick native’s expertise and knowledge. Two fights into that new partnership and Quigley looks better than ever.
From those early steps as a somewhat reluctant coach, Lee will be in the MGM Las Vegas in the early hours of tomorrow morning, playing a role in the biggest heavyweight bout in mnay years. As a determined Tyson Fury marches towards the ring, ahead of his second attempt to dethrone Deontay Wilder, Lee will there, behind him, a significant part of his cousin’s training team. This particular partnership started with a phone call. A couple of months ago, Fury rang Lee out of the blue. It wasn’t unusual for Fury to reach out to his cousin, but Lee wondered what it was about. Turned out the former world heavyweight champion was in need of a new trainer. They talked about various coaches but when Lee mentioned Javan ‘SugarHill’ Steward, nephew of Emanuel, Fury was immediately sold on the idea. However, the team wasn’t complete. Within a couple of weeks of starting to work with Steward, Fury texted Lee and asked him to join his team for tonight’s hotly-anticipated rematch with Wilder. ‘As someone who is just starting out as a coach, training a couple of fighters at a different level to where Tyson is, to get the chance to work with someone who is going to be the heavyweight champion of the world is priceless experience,’ the thoughtful 35-year-old explained in one interview last week.
Although Lee will forever be associated with the legendary Steward and the late trainer’s Kronk gym, he also spent time with Adam Booth and it was the London trainer who guided the Limerick man to his world title.
He has talked before of picking up bits and pieces from both.
Even when doing something mundane as wrapping a fighter’s hand, something one of his two trainers will pop into his head.
However, given it is Steward’s nephew that Lee has worked with in ensuring Fury is in the best shape of his life, there is a real sense that the spirit of the Kronk will hang in the Las Vegas air tonight.
‘I don’t want to say his ghost is here but he’s definitely looming large over the training camp,’ Lee told Off the Ball earlier this week.
‘And I knew the personalities of both Tyson and Sugar Hull, knew the style and the way that he trains. I knew that it would gel well. There is a circle and he is back in that Kronk mode now.’
Fury arrived at the Kronk gym in Detroit, unannounced, back in 2010, when Lee was living and training with the legendary trainer. According to the urban myth that has grown up around those couple of weeks, the raw, young British fighter had put everyone on the canvas, including then-reigning world heavyweight champion Vladimir Klistchko.
But Lee has remarked before that his cousin has relied simply on raw talent to climb to the summit of heavyweight boxing.
And nobody has ever taught Fury the basics of boxing. That is where Lee and SugarHill Steward have come in over the past few weeks. Lee says that he is getting accustomed to being a trainer. ‘When you are a boxer and you are in camp, you are just focused on that session, in that moment but then when that is over, you can switch off until the next day.
‘If you are training, you are constantly thinking about the next session, how you challenge your guy. But I am enjoying it.’
And in Las Vegas tonight, with the eyes of the world on Fury facing Wilder for his WBC title, the Limerick man’s coaching reputation could be greatly enhanced.