This summer light heavyweight boxer Mike Lee extended his career-long undefeated streak by beating Jose Hernandez in a unanimous decision in a highly-touted fight June 8, just outside Chicago.
The Wheaton, Illinois native, who lives and trains in Los Angeles, graduated from Notre Dame with highest honors but turned down a career on Wall Street to pursue success in the ring. Despite putting a full-time business career on hold Lee is an avid investor and has his own CBD products business. He’s also battled throughout his career with a rare autoimmune disease and even wrote about it in The Players’ Tribune. Most recently, this fall Lee signed a partnership with Sanabul, a premium fighting gear brand, to become part of Team Sanabul.
Currently 21-0, Lee awaits the chance to spar for the world light heavyweight title that he says may occur early next year. Last month I got to speak with Lee a second time about his career, his grueling yet rewarding training regimen, and the mental aspects of the game of boxing.
Andy Frye: Your whole pro career you’ve been undefeated. Describe the training program of an undefeated boxer.
Mike Lee: Yeah, at 21-0 and third in the world, we’re looking at getting a world title shot, probably early next year, and I’ll continue to train with intensity up to that moment. During training camps my regimen made up of long, tough days. Two workouts a day, six days a week, we’re sparring three days a week, and then in between conditioning and a lot of cardio of running, swimming and more. Closer to the matchup, we work on a game plan based on my opponent’s strengths or weaknesses. Each training camp is eight weeks long.
AF: How do you know that you’re ready for fight day?
Lee: You hear a lot from athletes in different sports about that they’re “feeling 100 percent.” When fight day comes, if I’ve done my work I feel good.
Listen, boxing is a tough sport, and you’re constantly in fight or flight. We’re getting hit in the face, taxing our bodies. And there’s always something in life that comes up that can distract you, and always some fine tuning and work to be done somewhere. But the truth is if you’re truly 100 percent at the end of your training —meaning you feel recharged and comfortable— then you’ve probably not trained hard enough.
AF: You’ve said there’s a big mental aspect to both your training and fight day.
Lee: Early on, when I first turned pro I started getting a lot of notoriety with some sponsorships and the Subway commercials. I found myself at times surrounded by phenomenal athletes from all different sports. In that and in boxing I found that everyone is strong and fast, everyone is talented. But what separates the elite athletes from the good ones is mindset. Preparation too.
I started working with sports psychologists and found that it had a profound effect right off the bat when I turned pro. There have been exceptional studies that show that if you really visualize your goals and make it very clear in your mind, your brain will be conditioned to trigger certain responses to the moment when you are actually in it. Throughout training I started focusing on visualizing certain moments of the fight — exactly what the ring walk would look like, what it would sound and smell like, even taste like, to put my mind there in that moment.
What I’ve really gotten good at is visualizing how to break down a fight, so that when I step in the ring on fight night, I’ve been there 200 times.
