Boxing: Lee displays impressive talent

Last year Andy Lee won a silver medal at the World Under-19 Championships in Cuba – and tonight the teenage Irish fighter will try and win the Four Nations middleweight title at Sophia Gardens in Cardiff.

Lee was yesterday's most impressive semi-final winner when he effortlessly stopped the local boxer François Borg in the third round. Lee scored with a variety of punches including a bolo punch just before he dropped Borg with a right hook in the second round.

Tonight Lee meets the current English middleweight champion, Neil Perkins, and it will take a lot to stop the 18-year-old from staking his claim as the best amateur middleweight in the British Isles. Lee started to box at the Repton club in London's East End and won two national schoolboy titles before returning to Ireland.

Up at super-heavyweight there were two very contrasting semi-finals involving three of the best boxers at the weight in Europe. In the first semi-final, England's David Price simply knew far too much for Ireland's relentless Thomas Crampton and won, clearly, 20-12.

The other semi-final was eagerly anticipated but proved to be surprisingly one-sided once the opening bell had sounded. Scotland's Ian Millarvie was five or six inches taller and nearly four stone heavier than the Welshman Kevin Evans but he barely threw a single punch in any of the four completed rounds.

It was a bewildering and dumb performance from a young fighter who has regularly impressed in the last two years and, for Evans, the 14-3 victory was far easier than even he could have imagined.

Tonight Evans is unlikely to enjoy such an easy session, because Price is far more effective than Millarvie and will not go to sleep once the bell has sounded.