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Andy Lee: It was either Tree Surgeon or Boxer!

Andy Lee joined Wednesday's OTB AM and shared a little known story about his origins as a boxer.&...



Andy Lee: It was either Tree S...
Videos

Andy Lee: It was either Tree Surgeon or Boxer!

Andy Lee joined Wednesday's OTB AM and shared a little known story about his origins as a boxer. 

The former Middleweight World Champion moved from Limerick to London when he was younger and rather than go to school - he worked for his father. 

"I can almost remember the day even. We left London, we moved to Limerick. My mother was from Limerick and we'd always planned to move back to Ireland as I spent my summers in Ireland. 

"When we left London, I didn't go to school and I was working with my dad and we were doing landscape gardening and tree-surgery and, as you can imagine, it's very physical, hard, labour and it was either a lifetime of doing that for the rest of my life or the only other thing I had going was boxing. 

Andy Lee: It was either Tree Surgeon or Boxer!

00:00:00 / 00:00:00

"And, I remember used to live on a road called The Bog Road, off the Dublin Road in Castleconnell and I was jogging down there one day with my headphones in, you know, just tossing it all up, and I said 'I'm going to give this a go. I'm going to dedicate myself and try and make it' because it was hard work doing all that stuff up trees and I continued doing  that but also focused on boxing. 

"I would prioritise my boxing and my dad would always give me the space to do what I needed to do and, if I needed a day off to go to Dublin to train or things like that - it was given. 

"I don't think I ever mentioned it to them - boxing was something we always did. My older brothers would box and they were international boxers as well but they got married and moved away from it as late teenagers. 

"I guess it was just a given that I was going to box and see how far I wanted to go myself."

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