Andy Lee praises influence of Emanuel Steward in world title victory

“If you have a certain amount of talent and you’re dedicated and you’re hungry and you have the right trainer and the right manager who can manoeuvre you it’s not a one in a million shot. If you’re a good fighter who has a certain amount of talent, as long as you listen to your coach, it’s not one in a million.”

That's what new WBO middleweight champion had to say about the importance of fighters having the right people behind he scenes. Andy Lee fought under the tutelage of Emanuel Steward before the untimely death of the famous trainer and the Limerick fighter recalled times when Steward would promise that Lee would be a world champion one day. And while Steward, who passed away in 2012, could not be in Lee's corner on Saturday night, Lee did have Steward's widow in the arena. “I had a message in the week asking me to get in contact with Marie, Emanuel’s wife, and we kept missing each other’s calls,” Lee told BoxingNewsOnline. “Then I got a message on Friday saying, ‘Andy, I land tomorrow for the fight.’ So Adam sorted her out a ticket for the fight and it was a great boost that she could be there, you know. She came of her own accord, it was nice that she’d take the time to do that and pay her own money. It was great to win it.” Lee continued: “For me it’s great. It’s come full circle. There were so many backstories to this fight. "I signed my first professional contract nearly nine years to the day with Emanuel Steward, December 15, 2006, and a year before in December I came here [Las Vegas] for the first time to see Danny Williams fight Vitali Klitschko, Emanuel invited me out and I came to Las Vegas, and the thing about coming back here with Adam, and the only reason he started boxing was the Thomas Hearns-Sugar Ray Leonard fight and here we were back by where that fight happened.” The "Adam" in question is Lee's current trainer Adam Booth who was just as big a fan of the late Steward. When explaining how he got into the sport of boxing, Booth said: "My stepdad got me out of bed at one in the morning in 1981, dragged me to a cinema, gave me biscuits and made me watch [Ray] Leonard-[Tommy] Hearns I. "There, you had Tommy Hearns, an Emanuel Steward fighter, fighting my idol and my only idol in life and I’ve watched that fight 10 times more than I’ve watched anything else. I still love it to this day. "Now I’m back here, with an Emanuel Steward fighter, next to Caesars Palace, who’s fought for the world middleweight title. Last night, after the fight, I was in my room looking over Caesars Palace with Emanuel’s wife. You take all of these things in.”