George Kimball America At LargeThat he would be sharing digs with the heavyweight champion of the world is an ancillary benefit that hadn't occurred to Andy Lee when he signed on with Hall of Fame trainer Emanuel Steward.
Eleven other boxers will perform on the undercard when Wladimir Klitschko defends his IBF title against Calvin Brock two weeks from Saturday at Madison Square Garden, but it's a safe bet that none of the others are preparing at a state-of-the-art training facility in the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania.
"There aren't a lot of distractions here," said Lee. "There's nothing to do but train and get in shape. I mean, I'm only in a six-rounder and (Klitschko) is defending a world title, but we're doing the exact same thing. I could be fighting for a world title myself."
His November fight against 17-2 Dennis Sharp will be the sixth professional outing for the 22-year-old Limerick middleweight, who moved to the States in January and has been living in the Detroit home of the legendary trainer.
The arrangement, said Lee, "was supposed to be temporary, but we get on so well and he doesn't mind having me there, so it's worked out well. He's not kicked me out yet, anyway."
Whether Detroit is the Limerick of America or Limerick is the Detroit of Ireland remains unclear, but there are, Lee learned, similarities.
"In Ireland I tell people I'm from Limerick and they act as if they're sorry for me, even though Limerick is a lovely place," said Lee. "In America I say I live in Detroit and they go 'Eww! Detroit?'
"Detroit might not be the prettiest place to look at, but it does have a certain charm. The people there are very straightforward, like Irish people in a way - blue-collar, hard-working people who'll tell you what they're thinking."
The common supposition is that Steward spotted Lee as a diamond in the rough at the 2004 Athens Games and then, after outbidding a slavering pack of rival managers and promoters, spirited him away to America, out from under the noses of the Irish Boxing Federation, thereby robbing Ireland of its best medal hope for the 2008 Beijing Olympics.
"Actually, Andy first came to my attention in 2002," said Steward. "At the time I was the director of coaching for USA Boxing, and I was supposed to go to the Youth Championships in Havana with the American team.
"As it happened, there was a big hurricane that week and I couldn't get to Havana, but I was getting my reports back by telephone. The best boxer we'd sent down there was Jesus Gonzales, a middleweight who had been named USA Boxing's Fighter of the Year," said Steward.
"When I got a phone call saying Gonzales had lost, I said 'Who'd he lose to? A Cuban?' and they said 'No, it was some Irish kid'. 'What?' I said. 'Ireland don't have no good fighters!'"
Steward didn't go to the 2004 Olympics, but his scout, John Oden, returned with the report that of all the boxers he'd seen in Athens, only two had real pro potential. One was Britain's Amir Khan. The other was Lee.
Steward invited Andy to come to Detroit to have a look around, and sent him a plane ticket.
"He flew from Shannon to Chicago to Detroit, and then went to the gym straight off the plane, without sleeping," recalled Steward, who put Lee in the ring with Cornelius Bundrage, a middleweight then undefeated as a professional.
"Andy," recalled Steward, "kicked his butt."
It was the beginning of the courtship.
"The Irish Sports Council was so anxious for me to remain an amateur that they offered to fund me for the next four years," recalled Lee.
"It would have been nice to stay and fight for my country, and have a chance to right the wrongs that happened in Athens, but it would have been . . . four years of uncertainty. You never knew if I might get another bad decision in qualifying, or an injury, and that's it - it's gone and then there's no pro offers on the table.
"I reckoned that if I stayed in Ireland I'd be a big fish in a small pond, but since I was going to turn professional anyway, why not start out . . . in America?"
Lee says that while a couple of British promoters expressed interest, Steward's was the only significant offer. Andy started off fighting six-rounders from the moment he turned pro, though only a couple of them lasted that long.
"In both of the fights that went the distance (Anthony Cannon in Detroit and Carl Cockerham in Las Vegas), the opponent was down twice in the last round and out on his feet when the bell rang," reported Steward.
Two other foes (Rodney Freeman in Memphis and Jess Salway in Vegas last month) didn't get out of the first round. On both occasions the knockout punch was a right jab delivered from Lee's southpaw stance.
But, just as Lee supposed it would, the real education has come between fights. In the formative years of his famed Kronk Boxing stable, Steward was noted for throwing his fighters together and letting them sort matters out in the ring of his steamy gym.
In his hey-day, Thomas Hearns was as apt to spar with a Tony Tucker or a Steve McCrory as with a boxer of more proximate size, and it is a tradition Steward has continued to this day.
Back in Detroit, Lee has had several spirited sparring sessions with the world champion at his own weight, Jermain Taylor, but at this camp in the Poconos he has worked with Kermit Cintron ("who will be welterweight champion before the week is out", promises Steward; Cintron meets Mark Suarez for the IBF title in Florida Saturday night), with unbeaten cruiserweight Johnathan Banks, and, on occasion, with Klitschko.
"Only a few months ago I was reading about these guys, and here I am working with them and relaxing and talking with them," marvelled Lee. "I'm a million miles from home, but I'm where I want to be."
