Andy Lee's burgeoning career as a trainer looks set to make him one of boxing's main characters

The 42

2 days ago

KATIE TAYLOR'S THIRD success over Amanda Serrano at Madison Square Garden accounted for most of the boxing coverage in Ireland last weekend but Off-Broadway in this country's news cycle, Taylor's fellow Irish boxing great furthered his own case for being the best in the world.
About 18 kilometres off Broadway, to be more precise. A night after Taylor's triumph, at the Louis Armstrong tennis stadium in Flushing, Queens, Andy Lee added the latest feather to his cap as a trainer, steering Englishman Hamzah Sheeraz to a victory that caught the eye of the boxing world.
The 26-year-old Sheeraz appeared to have been on an inexorable ascent at middleweight as recently as February, reeling off 21 straight wins with 17 of them quick, but a highly fortunate draw with world champion Carlos Adames on the Artur Beterbiev-Dimitry Bivol rematch card in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, had made him look distinctly human, bearing some Sheeraz's inefficiencies for the first time on the biggest stage.
Sheeraz split with his Los Angeles-based trainer, Ricky Funez, and turned instead to Dublin, where former middleweight champ Andy Lee supervised his jump to super-middleweight and lit the rocket under him once more.
Last Saturday in Queens, in his first fight as a 168-pounder, Sheeraz stopped inside five rounds Edgar Berlanga (previously 23-1, 18KOs), the explosive Puerto Rican who had taken Saul 'Canelo' Alvarez the distance only a couple of fights prior.
The result on paper would have been enough to catch the eye of any boxing fan who missed the fight, but the finish was a real head-turner.
Sheeraz, his nose bloodied in the early exchanges, rediscovered the nasty gear that had been missing against Adames. He dropped Berlanga twice, hard, in the fourth, only for 'The Chosen One' to be saved by the bell. But Sheeraz closed the show almost instantaneously at the start of the fifth, his first three punches of the round dropping Berlanga again and forcing the intervention of referee David Fields.
Coach Lee never actively chased the spotlight during his career as a fighter — although more of it would have been nice — but having already proven a highly popular pundit on either side of the Atlantic, the Limerick man looks destined to become one of boxing's main characters as a trainer.
Berlanga appeared to acknowledge this on some level at the launch press conference in May, warning Sheeraz across the top table: 'I'mma fuck you up and Andy Lee on the same night, you heard?'
'It's crazy,' Lee told his British middleweight contemporary Darren Barker during a sit-down interview the following day. 'It's funny. I like the attention.
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'What's he targeting me for?' Lee laughed. 'But I like it. And I like him (Berlanga). I think he's good for the game. We need characters like this.'
Barker replied: 'Of all the people to target!'
And true enough, virtually none of Lee's 38 opponents ever spoke to him the way Berlanga did before the Sheeraz fight, but then Lee himself was never quite so forthright in assessing rivals' frailties as he is in his role as a coach. Berlanga had also nearly fallen foul of the Irishman's coaching expertise previously, having endured a far tougher night than most expected against the Lee-trained Jason Quigley a couple of years prior.
Simply put, the role of a coach is to make an athlete better. Lee brought the maximum out of middleweight world-title challenger Quigley and he has unlocked new gears in all of his charges, most notably Samoan-Kiwi Joseph Parker whom he has guided back from relative obscurity to the top of the queue to challenge undisputed heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk.
He has also recently reignited the career of British Olympic star Ben Whittaker, who turned to Lee after he hit the skids against Liam Cameron last October. Under Lee's tutelage, Whittaker took an immediate rematch against Cameron and blasted the Sheffield man out of there in the second round, once more looking like the star that British boxing hoped he would become.
And while he previously contributed to Tyson Fury's world-title successes over Deontay Wilder — indeed, it may be no coincidence that Fury's best ever performance, in his second bout with the American, came off the back of a full camp with Lee as his co-trainer alongside SugarHill Steward — the Limerick man will get the chance to fledge his first world champion as a solo trainer this autumn.
Following his mostly picturesque performance and contentious disqualification defeat for a punch after the bell in March, Paddy Donovan's rematch with Lewis Crocker looks set to take place at Windsor Park in September. Theirs will be the first all-Irish world-title fight in boxing history.
Andy Lee and Paddy Donovan. Gary Carr / INPHO Gary Carr / INPHO / INPHO
It was 'The Real Deal' Donovan who first lured his fellow Limerick man Lee back into the gym in 2019 and they will greatly fancy their chances of beating 'The Croc' for the vacant IBF welterweight strap, with Donovan having already ostensibly beaten up the Belfast man in his hometown.
While far from a foregone conclusion, a world-title success for Donovan would position Lee as the frontrunner for Trainer of the Year, a global award for which he was already nominated by Ring Magazine at the end of a stellar 2024.
The generational talents of Oleksandr Usyk could scupper that notion if the Ukrainian faces Lee's heavyweight, Joe Parker, before the end of the year, although Usyk may wait until early 2026 before returning to the ring following his sensational stoppage of Daniel Dubois on Saturday night.
But Lee's 2025, and his coaching career to this point, are worthy of recognition in any case: there are few Irish coaches in any sport thriving to the same extent at an elite international level.
A former student of the great Emanuel Steward and Adam Booth, Lee is well on his way to becoming one of boxing's most celebrated teachers.