Andy Lee book extract: ‘We’ve packed a lot into my first two years as a pro’

LIMERICK'S former world boxing champion Andy Lee has released his biography - The Fighter.

The following is an extract from the book, which was launched last Tuesday in O'Mahony's.

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The buzz spreads to Ireland.

After a few quiet years, the country is falling in love with pro boxing again. Big nights in Dublin, sell-outs in the Point, Bernard Dunne building nicely towards his world title shot.

I’ve been away for three years and now it’s time to come home. It doesn’t take much for Emanuel’s positivity to start turning heads, filling column inches. Damian negotiates a deal for me with Brian Peters, the main promoter in Ireland: five fights, spread over the next couple of years, all to be shown live on RTÉ.

I keep ticking off the wins, home and away, one at a time. 12–0. 13–0. 14–0. I go back to Limerick in early 2008 to fight in my home city for the first time since my amateur days.

When I stop Alejandro Falliga in the main event at UL, my record stands at fifteen fights, fifteen wins, twelve of those knockouts. We’ve packed a lot into my first two years as a pro.

Top Rank are interested in me again, and this time they’re determined to get the deal done, no matter how complicated the chain of negotiation seems.

I’m booked for a fight in March 2008 against Brian Vera in the Mohegan Sun. I don’t know much about Uncasville, Connecticut, or about Vera for that matter. He’ll fall like the others, and all of America will see this. My step up to the next level, my coming out party, will go out live on national television, ESPN’s Friday Night Fights.

I’ll win this, sign with Top Rank, and after that, the sky’s the limit. A HBO debut on Kelly Pavlik’s undercard in June, most likely, and after that, I’ll be right at the top of the list for a shot at Pavlik’s title. He’s the champion that Emanuel wants for me. Destroy is the word he uses when he’s talking me up to reporters. Andy will destroy Kelly.

At the height of it all, I buy myself a car that’s worthy of this new superstar lifestyle. A white BMW 7 Series, a 745li.
See it on a Sunday, buy it on a Wednesday; as obnoxious as it is impulsive. Emanuel loves it. By the time I get the car home, he already has his paint guy there to put the pinstripe along the side of it and put my name on the door handle, exactly the same as Emanuel’s own cars.

That’s his thing.

A white kid driving around Detroit in a white BMW 7 Series with his name on the side; I was looking for trouble. One night in the depths of winter, it very nearly found me.

I brace myself before I even open the door of the gym and step out onto the street. The cold stings. Detroit winter takes no prisoners. The temperature gauge in the car tells me it’s minus six and I’d well believe it. I turn the engine on and the heating up.

I ring Maud and we’re chatting away while I start to drive home, but then I get a notion and I spin the car around and head back in the other direction. Emanuel is out of town travelling for a few days, doing a HBO show, and Sugar Hill is gone to visit one of his former boxers in prison and I don’t know what time he’ll be back.

I decide to pick up some food on the way home to save me cooking.

I pull into an empty parking lot outside this Mexican restaurant. It looks like Los Pollos Hermanos from Breaking Bad and almost certainly serves the kind of food I shouldn’t be eating, and that’s exactly what I’m in the mood for. I sit in the car, lights on, engine on, while I finish chatting to Maud.

I’d never usually do that, and I’m familiar enough with this neighbourhood to know that it’s not the kind of place that a guy like me in a car like this wants to hang around in for too long. Get in, get the food, get out. Ten minutes later, I’m still on the phone.

‘OK, OK, I better go. I better get off the phone here before I get jacked.’

I’m laughing away to myself as we say goodbye, but as I put down the phone, a shadow moves in the rear-view mirror that catches my eye. There are two guys standing behind the car. I hadn’t noticed anyone around when I pulled in to park. Now I see that there are two or three more guys on the other side of the car, standing around the dumpster, half-obscured.

I’ve a funny feeling that this can only go one of two ways from here; either I get out of the car, or they’ll find a way to remove me themselves.

I sit for a minute, and when I move, I try to do it in one smooth motion, as quickly as possible. Out, car door locked behind me, and make a beeline for the restaurant. As soon as I step out of the car, they start walking towards me. I pick up the pace, move a bit faster. The front door of the restaurant is only about ten yards away, thankfully, and I duck inside.

There’s more adrenaline running through my body now than there was when I was doing my workout a half-hour ago. I try not to panic so I order some food, but it’s going cold and I’m frantically trying to get Emanuel or Sugar Hill on the phone. Through the window I can see these guys, hoods up and heads down, hanging around the car.

I try Emanuel and Sugar Hill a few more times. Still no answer. I go through my phone but I don’t have numbers for anyone else who might be able to come and help me. I sit there for half an hour, forty minutes, watching these guys watch my car. Emanuel calls me back eventually. I tell him the story.

‘Emanuel, I think I’m going to be robbed here. Car jacked, like. I’m sitting inside the restaurant and these guys are just waiting out there for me to come out.’

‘Alright, alright. You just wait there. I’ll get someone to come help you.’

Five, maybe ten minutes later, this huge RV whips into the parking lot, like something straight out of The A-Team minus the theme tune, and pulls up outside the door of the restaurant. Four or five guys that I know from the Kronk jump out and start shouting.

‘What’s going on?’

The driver, a guy called Ali Hakim, comes over to me. ‘You OK? You OK, man? Where these guys at?’

Unsurprisingly, they’re nowhere to be seen now. Ali’s a big man, a former heavyweight fighter. Doing a runner was unquestionably their most sensible course of action.

They’ve disappeared off into the night.

* Fighter by Andy Lee with Niall Kelly, is published by Gill Books, priced €22.99.