Hassan Ndam Njikam from Cameroon was Lee’s conqueror, a tough, abrasive fighter who established a lead in the first two rounds and just about protected it. On the evidence of his first bout the Irish camp expected Hassan to be more aggressive, which would have suited Lee’s counter-punching style. Instead Hassan went like-for-like in the first couple of rounds, picking off his man and forcing Lee to chase the fight from the third round onwards.
When the verdict was announced Lee bent down on one knee and dashed his fist into the canvass. It was frustration as much as despair because he knew he hadn’t performed: “I didn’t box at all,” he said.
“I lost that fight myself. I think the occasion got to me, I don’t know. The sharpness and timing wasn’t there, I didn’t feel it. He had his tactics right, he moved from the first round. It didn’t suit my style.
“Billy (Walsh, trainer knew what he was at as well. Billy was telling me to feint, feint and throw my left hand. Sometimes it worked but a lot of times I couldn’t get it off. I didn’t box at all.”
In a high-scoring fight that finished 27-all, Lee was never once in front. Hassan led by two points at the end of the first and extended that lead to four with a strong finish to the second. At that stage the Irish corner knew their man was in trouble and Lee was noticably more assertive in the last two rounds, chasing Hassan around the ring, forcing the issue. Lee dared to hope that he might have done enough.
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“I thought I might have been ahead, in my own head. I thought maybe I was one or two ahead. One more jab, one more punch and I’d have been here talking to you as . . . You never know with a countback. I was doing all the aggression so I thought I might have had a chance. But you never know with a countback, it can go either way.
“He was strong and he was harder than I thought. A couple of times he caught me with nice shots. But it was all my own fault. He boxed a totally different fight but fair play to him.”
Lee was close to tears in the mixed zone after the fight. He was the youngest of the 28 fighters in the middleweight division and regarded as one of the most talented. In Hassan, though, he came up against a formidable opponent and a smart street fighter.
During the week the Irish camp was confident that their man had more technical ability but it didn’t come down to that. Hassan roughed him up at times and seemed to have more power in his shots. Physically, Lee came out of the fight in one piece, except for his broken heart.
“You can see how devastated he is,” said his trainer, Billy Walsh, “a young man of 20 years of age. His dream was to be Olympic champion and he could have been close enough to it.
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“We thought we had the tactics right and we worked all week on feinting to him and drawing him on and countering and Andy just said himself he couldn’t do it. He just didn’t step back when your man lunged in with his shots. We knew exactly what he was going to do. And then he got on his bike when he went ahead and then we had to chase. When you go behind you’ve got to chase. It’s a fight he didn’t want to fight.
“In saying that he had a great third round and a great last round and I thought he might have snuck ahead when it came to a countback. I knew he was two down going into the last round and I thought he’d done enough to get it back. It wasn’t to be.
“He’s devastated. At 20 years of age you can’t see four years down the road. It’s a long time and a long time in boxing. But he’ll come back better from it. I think he’ll learn a helluva lot from it.”
Whether Lee stays amateur remains to be seen. He has already had informal approaches from America with a view to joining the professional ranks. Good judges reckon that his style would be better suited to the pro game but we’ll see. A bad week for Ireland at the Games just got a little bit worse.