“I really want to talk about ‘Nosferatu,’” says Andy Lee as he drives away from the gym having just watched Joseph Parker, his heavyweight, spar eight rounds.
It is perhaps better, for him, to be asked about “Nosferatu,” or indeed any film, than to be asked about the thing that has stalked, consumed, and threatened to suck the life from him for over 30 years. It is also, as far as topics of conversation go, preferable to Daniel Dubois, Parker’s next opponent, and anything else Lee finds himself thinking about on a daily basis.
Besides, he had already done the boxing chat. That had all happened the day before I arrived in Dublin, Ireland, when a pack of reporters and their cameras descended on Ballybrack Boxing Club and wanted to know how Parker’s training was going and what Parker would attempt to do on the night of February 22. Come Tuesday, the following day, Lee had no time for any more lip service. He had, in truth, little time at all.
“I wake up at 6.30, get the kids dressed, fed, lunches made, school run done …” he says, currently behind schedule. “We are literally late every day. We’re never on time. But that’s fine. Then I go straight to the gym, get there for about 9.30, put on the heating, and the fighters start to come in and we train until about 12. I then rush back for the first school pickup at 12.30, then another at 1.15, and then we have afternoon activities: swimming, ballet, drama, music, gymnastics. I then go back to the gym for afternoon training before returning home for food and to put the kids to bed.”
Not yet halfway through the day, Lee knows he still has much of this itinerary to complete and can therefore only give so much of his time to boxers and those wanting to ask him about boxing. Nowadays, you see, he is a retired fighter reaping the rewards of letting boxing sink its teeth into him for so many years. He has, for instance, a house of his own in Dublin, which he shares with his wife and three children. He also has an extended family in the gym, all of whom require the same level of care and attention.
“The change in my life has been by degrees,” Lee says. “I’ve gone from just waking up and thinking about myself every second of the day and making decisions for myself – where you train, where you eat, when you sleep, what to watch on TV – to thinking about other people and making decisions for other people. First and foremost, my kids. That’s obviously a pleasure. But also, the fighters, who are like my kids.”
Back when we first met, in 2012, Lee had a lot more time. He had more time to discuss boxing, he had more time to himself, and he had more time ahead of him, too, professionally speaking. With so much time, in fact, he was often at a loss as to what to do most of the week. He would go to the gym, sometimes twice a day, and would then do his roadwork, but beyond that was rudderless; just another Irishman stuck in London. The days were long and the biggest challenge was filling them. Whenever our paths crossed, he would invariably ask: “Seen any good films lately?”
In 2014, Lee was living in rented accommodation in Purley, Surrey, a two-minute drive from the home of his coach, Adam Booth, and never more dedicated or bored. It was a place Lee shared with several others, each of them strangers, and his personal space was a box-room consisting of a single-bed and a small table.
On that table most nights he had two tablet devices, an Apple Mac computer, a pair of white headphones and a Kindle in a black wallet. There was also a television at the end of his bed and between training sessions he would hook up a tablet to the television and watch an American crime series. At the time, he was trying to persuade me to watch “Breaking Bad,” adamant that it was worth the investment and deserving of all the hype. He recommended, too, an abstract, independent film called “Upstream Colour,” which, upon watching it, was all the evidence I needed that Andy Lee was different from the many other fighters I had encountered. Unlike the others, his recommendations one was more inclined to listen to and act upon. Unlike the others, he had things to say about stuff outside boxing and himself. He even had an idea for a film script he revealed to me.
“There are two people in this place I still haven’t even seen yet,” Lee said in the communal kitchen one afternoon. “We all come and go at different times and nobody likes to spend time together in the kitchen. Each room is like its own little house. When you’ve got televisions, computers, phones and music, you kind of create your own little world.
“Weirdly, there were no checks done on me when I showed an interest in taking a room here. I could have been a serial killer for all they knew.”
Although not a serial killer, Lee, in the tradition of most serial killers, kept himself to himself and, like the rest, shuffled on through to the kitchen only when certain the coast was clear. It was then that he prepared his meal – that day pasta, tuna, olives, and garlic in tomato sauce – and during the cooking of it heard a noise coming from the bathroom down the hallway. “Ask him his name, will you?” he said to me. “He told me once but I forgot it.”
Into the kitchen a housemate soon arrived and a bowl of tagliatelle was shoved into a microwave. Before that, he reintroduced himself as Mark. “Bet you can’t remember my name, can you?” he said to Lee. “I remember yours. I knew we’d quickly forget names around here. We need name tags.”
Fighting the hum of the microwave, the two strangers now discussed a recent rugby match while Lee looked for a sieve. He eventually found one in Mark’s drawer. “Help yourself,” said Mark, after which Lee pointed to his own drawer and stressed that Mark was free to gorge on whatever food he found inside.
“There’s still one person in here I haven’t met,” said Mark.
“There’s two I haven’t met,” said Andy.
“The one person I’m talking about always has their door shut. I don’t know whether to knock and introduce myself or leave them to it.”
“There’s almost a silent agreement in place where we use the kitchen at different times and make sure we don’t overlap,” Lee explained once Mark had disappeared with his dinner. “Then we go to our rooms, sleep and go to work the next day.”
Work naturally meant a different thing for both men. For Mark, it meant working in Braintree, Essex, as an electrical engineer, whereas for Andy Lee it meant finishing his meal, resting for a couple of hours, and then travelling the five minutes it took to reach the boxing gym.
Mark, from what I could tell, had no idea what Andy Lee did for a living, let alone have reason to believe he would later that year win a WBO middleweight title. But Lee, of course, wasn’t there to boast, flex his muscles, or make friends. This, for him, was just part of the journey, a means to an end. Moreover, it was not something to which he was unaccustomed: the hard life, the shared life, downtime. In Detroit, in fact, which is where Lee previously roamed, he spent seven years with Kronk legend Emanuel Steward, with whom he not only trained but lived.
“Because of my upbringing there was no sense of being sheltered or protected,” said Lee, who for years lived in Steward’s home. “I didn’t mind travelling around and trying new places. When Emanuel and Detroit came about, I didn’t think twice.
“A lot of the things the guys in Detroit faced I’d also faced within communities in which I’d been raised. I’d experienced prejudice and isolation, so I had some kind of common ground with a lot of the black guys there. Ultimately, though, I think they appreciated me because I’d made such a sacrifice to be there. Most of the guys didn’t know what Ireland was and certainly couldn’t have pointed it out on a map. They’d ask me, ‘What state is that?’ They respected the fact I went all that way to train with them all.”
The first time Lee met Steward, the coach was on a speaking tour in Belfast with Thomas “Hitman” Hearns and about to officially open a Kronk gym in the city. “I didn’t say much, but I studied him,” Lee recalled. “He was always a talker and he talked a lot that day. But everything he said I agreed with. He wasn’t someone who just talked for the sake of it. He talked because he was passionate.”
By March 2006, the month of Lee’s pro debut, Steward was in the Irish southpaw’s corner and allowing him to live in his house rent-free. Together, in an effort to whittle away the hours between sessions, they would often discuss boxing. They would make plans. They would dream of world titles.
When eventually winning one in 2014, Lee did so without Steward by his side but was watched and supported that night by Marie, Emanuel’s widow. He also wore trunks with colouring synonymous with the Kronk gym and paid tribute afterwards to both Steward, his first coach, and Adam Booth, his latest one. From both he had learned plenty; for both he had sacrificed so much.
In 2012, after watching the Paul Thomas Anderson film “The Master,” Lee gave me his thoughts on the film and said that the film’s main character, Lancaster Dodd, an L. Ron Hubbard archetype, reminded him of Adam Booth. He possessed, he said, the same magnetism and ability to make one believe whatever it was they were being told and I, having recommended the film, couldn’t help but be impressed by his reading of it.
Five years later Lee was still working with Booth but no longer a world champion and not entirely sure how much longer he had left in the sport. Thankfully, by then, in 2017, he had made enough money to retire comfortably and had already made a start on his family. He also continued both offering me and asking me for recommendations; things to either watch or read to break up the monotony of the days he spent away from the people he loved.
Weeks before meeting him again, this time in Merstham, I had recommended a novel, Paul Beatty’s “The Sellout,” and Lee had actually gone and read it. Not only that, he said he enjoyed it, this biting satire about race relations in America, and expressed the extent of his enjoyment while in the gym, warming up ahead of a sparring session. It was at that point I remembered how he was different from the rest and why his words, whether recommendations or boxing-related insights, carried a greater weight than any of the others I listened to, wrote down and recorded as part of my job.
“Once I come home from a fight it takes me a week or two to decompress,” Lee explained when I asked how life had been for him in the wake of a recent defeat. “My wife and I will go for a nice meal and I’ll sit there and eat it quickly. I won’t enjoy it. She’ll say, “What’s the point in us doing this?” You just become so self-consumed. You need humanising after a fight just as you need to dehumanize before a fight.
“People think I’m this nice guy and this well-rounded individual, but, believe me, it was one of the hardest things I have had to go through [a 2015 defeat to Billy Joe Saunders]. It won’t be until I win another significant fight that I’ll be at peace with it, you know? I just know with the boxing landscape and the politics that there won’t ever be a rematch with Billy Joe Saunders. I’ll never be able to put that right. The only way I can put it right is by going on and maybe winning the title again. Other than that, it’s just something I have to live with.”
If defeats help to humble and, yes, humanise, the same could be said for the nomad lifestyle and the kind of arrangement Lee had in both Detroit and London. These things were not enough to soothe the pain of defeat, no, or for that matter the fear of The End, but a firm grasp on reality, and an ability to rub along with civilians in the real world, no doubt left Lee better prepared for disappointment and change than most.
“It’s easy to forget those times,” he said. “It’s a lofty goal, becoming world champion, so to do it you have to have that next level dedication. I had to do what I had to do. It was tough, but in some ways it was a pleasure. I learnt a great deal with Manny in Detroit and I learnt a great deal when I hooked up with Adam Booth and was living in rented accommodation over here. I was learning every day and coming home, no matter where I was living, buzzing. I was excited by my career.
“My circumstances have changed and I’m older now. I don’t think I could go back and share a kitchen with half a dozen people. But I’m not satisfied or the finished article yet. There are a lot of ways I can still improve and that makes me excited.”
Sadly, Andy Lee never won another world title after losing to Billy Joe Saunders. Instead, he fought just one more time, beating KeAndrae Leatherwood over eight rounds in 2017, and later turned his attention to training others, including Tyson Fury, whom he guided to wins against Deontay Wilder.
Now, at 40, Lee is a respected trainer whose gym is home to the likes of Joseph Parker and Paddy Donovan and will in the future welcome Ben Whittaker. He is now a watcher rather than a doer and has other people to think about and worry about and to also teach and ultimately protect. This is as true in the gym as it is at home.
“The good thing about it is that the training is intense and periodical,” he tells me in Dublin. “It’s only for the camps. Joe and Paddy having their fights one week apart is even better because I can put them together, train them together, and when the fights are over I’ll have two or three weeks off.
“I’m looking forward to it, but also not looking forward to it at the same time. Because after big fights, win or lose, you fall off a bit of a cliff afterwards. There’s always a comedown. It doesn’t matter whether you win or lose, there’s a massive comedown. So that’s something to look forward to.”
In the old days Lee, the fighter, would typically go back home – that is, to his proper home – after the fight and this would put an end to the days of wandering the streets and sleeping either in other people’s homes or in rented box-rooms happy to accommodate serial killers. Now, though, it is all different. Lee, having made it, now has a permanent home of his own and spends most of his time there when he is not at the gym. He also has boxers who come to him and stay at Dublin hotels or in apartments just so they can be around him every day and learn from him and improve under him. Some, like Joseph Parker, have even travelled from as far as New Zealand.
“He’s been a big fighter since a young age, so early in his career, and he’s done so well, and I think he wants to keep that going,” says Lee. “I think that’s a big part of his motivation. A lot of his motivation comes from the fights and how big they are and the purses and how big they are. He wants to keep that going and keep supporting his family and living this lifestyle he has.
“You get to a certain point where you have to really want it to continue. All the bells and whistles that come with it – the fame, the fortune, and whatever else – it can only take you to a certain level and so far. You need something else to motivate you after a certain point. You get used to the fame and fortune, and then what? What’s next? Where do you find your validation after that? It has to come from within.”
Anyway, enough of the fighting talk. He has small children to pick up and is already late. There is, it seems, no time to waste. “I thought it was a great movie,” he says, now addressing what really matters. “It was weird, almost comedic…”
