Mike Lee sent Pablo Gomez's mouthpiece flying on the first knockdown.
Photo by Chris Farina/Top Rank
Mike Lee needed just two minutes and 17 seconds to win his fight on the big LasVegas stage.
Photo by Chris Farina/Top Rank
Mike Lee is based in Houston, so he can train with Ronnie Shields.
Mike Lee is now 4-0 with three knockouts in his young career.
Mike Lee took the first real hard shot of his boxing career Saturday night in Las Vegas. But it was the other guy who started wobbling and soon went tumbling down, courtesy of Lee's right-on right hand.
Lee — the Houston-based boxer who's become a burgeoning national curiosity with his finance degree from Notre Dame and unconventional fighter background — needed only two minutes and 17 seconds to dispatch of the latest man put in his way: the largely unremarkable Pablo Gomez. This is the second straight first-round knockout for Lee (following his flooring of Keith Debow in just 93 seconds at Cowboys Stadium in November) and moves him to a perfect 4-0 in his young career.
Fighting on the undercard of Brandon Rios and Miguel Acosta WBO lightweight title fight at the Palms Casino, Lee faced adversity for the first time though. It came in the wild right fist of Gomez, who caught Lee with a punch just seconds after the bell rung starting the fight.
Lee stayed steady on his feet, but he needed about 40 seconds to get back on the attack. Once he did, he sent Gomez to the canvas twice with the referee calling the fight after the second knockdown.
"He got caught with a good shot," Lee's Houston trainer Ronnie Shields said in a TV interview after the bout. "But he came back and knocked the guy out. You can't ask for more than that."
Lee's large contingent of fans (Lee devotee Wayne Newton wasn't visible this time, but a large group of guys in Team Lee T-shirts sat in one section of the arena) and Top Rank (Lee's promoter) are likely going to start asking for more soon. The 23-year-old Lee is being groomed to be a star and everyone around him knows it. Notre Dame's ultimate inspirational mascot — Rudy Ruettiger himself — has even taken to showing up at Lee's fights, landing a nice seat at the Palms.
Everyone wants to get on the Mike Lee train while the getting is good. Even if the Lee himself keeps saying, "I'm just trying to get better."
Taking a punch is one more giant-sized learning step. Ideally, Lee would not let a guy like Gomez (who is now 1-3-1 in his career) catch him off guard. But things happen in the ring. Boxing isn't sport where you can script out every punch.
"He just hit me with a right hand," Lee said in his post-bout interview. "I just had to regain my composure and I got him with my own right hand."
Not all rights are credited equal. Lee's won out. He's been working with Shields on his overhand rights and the gym sweat paid off even earlier in the bout when he sent Gomez's mouthpiece flying out and Gomez himself crashing to the canvas for the first time.
Now, Lee will return to Houston to train some more under Shields at the Savannah Boxing Club on Ashcroft. The tentative plan is that his next fight will take place in May.
The Gold Over America Tour cast performing on NBC's "America's Got Talent."
First came the gold medals, now comes the Gold Over America Tour, the gymnastics mega-show headlined by Simone Biles, currently touring 30 cities around the United States and coming to Houston’s Toyota Center on Saturday, October 19.
Joining Biles are fellow Paris Olympic champions Jordan Chiles, Jade Carey, and Hezly Rivera, along with bronze medal-winning men’s team members Paul Juda, Brody Malone, Asher Hong, and Fred Richard, plus other gymnastics superstars. Adding men to the G.O.A.T. showcase is a new twist; the 2021 tour, post-Tokyo Olympics, had a cast made up entirely of women.
It’s a change that Biles hopes will help elevate men’s gymnastics around the country.
Juda, for one, couldn’t be more grateful. The Olympic medalist is still riding the wave of excitement from winning the first USA men’s team medal in 16 years, along with having achieved his own dream of competing in the Olympic individual all-around final.
We recently chatted with Juda, who took us behind the scenes of the G.O.A.T. show, the squad, and life on the tour bus as a college student missing classes to travel the country like a rock star.
CultureMap: At the Olympics this summer, the whole vibe of men’s and women’s USA gymnastics seemed happy and supportive of each other. How are you carrying that camaraderie into performing together as a troupe in the Gold Over America Tour?
Paul Juda: I think during the whole Olympic experience we just had a lot of joy. We had a lot of of fun outside of those two hours of competition. So the competition in and of itself was kind of like a "mission critical," and we were pretty focused, but we still tried to keep it light.
On this, there's no real competition; we’re here to put on the best show possible for the audience. And as long as we can kind of keep leaning in on each other like our support system, the shows are going to come easier because it's going to be a long tour. It's going to be hard, but fun together.
I can already see even just on the the two nights and three days that we've been here together, we've had a lot of fun. We're all best friends here, and we're going to bring that kind of energy to the stage.
CM: The last Gold Over America Tour was all women - and the theme was very much female empowerment, and girls as superheroes. Now that men are included, what can we expect from the show this time?
PJ: I think it's awesome (men are included) and I'm not even gonna lie, this tour just got, like, a million times better after making a medal. I'm really excited to get to do the show. It's going to be a lot of back and forth (between men and women). Yeah, we're doing some gymnastics; we're trying to learn a little bit of dancing. We've got lights, we've got a lot of songs, and we're bouncing off of each other's stories. There's going to be a lot of really fun, fun parts. (Note: Here's a preview.)
CM: Figure skating has shows like “Stars on Ice” and the old “Ice Capades” that they can join after the Olympics to perform for audiences. Would you like to see something like that for gymnasts, who often don’t get to really “entertain” audiences?
PJ: Yeah, (in gymnastics) we use the human body to all of its maximum capability, and (learning) dance moves, I enjoy using a different side of my brain. I'm a guy who would also enjoy a musical or a Broadway show or something like that, just for the element of like, “Wow. Look at the choreography and how they're able to add the music and the lights and everything in the whole production.”
And then you couple it with the fact that we have, like, extraordinary strength and flexibility and we can kind of do almost circus-like events, but then also add in a touch of difficulty - like hey, okay, they're not just acrobats; they also spent 20 years doing this sport.
I feel like it's the ultimate show. You know, it's some dance lights, some music, a storyline, you can watch your favorite athlete and then see him or her in a kind of different light. Now the athlete literally just gets to have fun out there. I wouldn't see why people wouldn't want to see more of this type of show.
CM: There’s so much buzz around gymnastics during the Olympics. How do you keep those fans interested the other three years in between, especially men’s gymnastics?
PJ: I'm hoping this tour does that, and I'm also confident, like anything that we do afterwards on the global stage (like "pommel horse guy" Stephen Nedoroscik competing on Dancing With the Stars), I hope people are like, "Oh yeah, I see them doing that. But I also remember they represent men's gymnastics."
Paul Juda on parallel bars for the University of Michigan team.Photo by John Cheng
Q: A lot of cast members are in college, including yourself (a graduate student), and you’re also captain of the University of Michigan Men’s Gymnastics team. How will you balance your studies and college athletics commitments while you’re on tour?
PJ: (He holds up a notebook with a calendar planner filled in.) This. I'm looking at my schedule today, I've got a weekly reflection. I've got a case to work on. I've got a data analytics assignment, a lecture to watch, and a reading quiz to do, so, it's a lot for sure. Hopefully after this tour I can come back and be in a really good place with my team. It's really bittersweet. (Teammate Fred Richard and I) we were able to have our only really big tailgate of the year for the Michigan football game last week. And I'm just so heartbroken because that that's like my favorite part of the year.
I think my team will be okay, though, and I've left some excellent people in charge … phenomenal captains, and I have no doubt that they'll keep the team on pace, and if they need anything from me, they'll text me.
And on top of that, in terms of school, I think honestly, if anything, it’ll just keep me doing the right things. I got to go to bed early to wake up early and get some homework done, that's probably for the best. I’ll try to do some lectures on the tour bus and stuff.
CM:The reception in Houston - hometown of Simone Biles and adopted hometown of Jordan Chiles - will be nuts, and of course Fort Worth is where the last National Championships was held this past summer. What cities are you most looking forward to?
PJ: Chicago and Detroit are going to be my two main places. I've got a lot of people coming for the Detroit show from University of Michigan, and then Chicago, that’s where I'm from. Every time that I've visited Texas, I really enjoy Texas. We'll have a lot of fun. I'm excited to see the Texans come out and specifically in that Austin area, we've got a lot of people there.
CM: Well, don’t forget your cowboy hat.
PJ: Alright!
Note: This interview was edited for clarity and brevity. The Gold Over America Tour, presented by Athleta, will take place at 7:30 pm October 19 at the Toyota Center in Houston. For tickets ($35-$500) and more information, visit the website.