By Dan Ambrose: Recently defeated middleweight contender David Lemieux (25-1, 24 KO’s) is getting in shape in the gym to make corrections on the mistakes he made in his 7th round TKO loss to Marco Antonio Rubio in his last fight last April.

Lemieux, 21, went out slugging thinking he could mow the more experienced and equally powerful Rubio down early like he had his first 24 opponents. But Rubio failed to cave in and Lemieux eventually ran out of gas and was stopped in the 7th.

In a recent interview, Lemieux said he didn’t train hard enough for the Rubio fight, ate the wrong things and missed some of the training for the fight. Since attending some training sessions with WBC Diamond middleweight champion Sergio Martinez, Lemieux realizes that he hasn’t been taking his training serious enough and hasn’t been putting in the effort that he needs to be putting in for him to be successful in the future. He’s now working to correct those mistakes through hard work and dedication.

Lemieux doesn’t have an opponent picked out for his next fight but he wants to face a boxer next, someone that will give him some rounds so he can learn something instead of just another easy to beat opponent that he can mow down in one or two rounds like he had been doing in the first four years of his career up until his fight against Rubio last April. Lemieux has work work on learning how to box because he doesn’t have the size to knock every one out, and he’s going to be facing other big punchers in the future with the same kind of power that Rubio possessed. If Lemieux doesn’t know how to box well enough to avoid their big shots, he’ll likely end up getting knocked out again.

Ideally, Lemieux needs to move down to the junior middleweight division because he’s too short for the middleweight division. Although listed at 5’10 1/2″, Lemieux appeared to be 2 inches shorter than the 5’10” Rubio in their fight. At best, I’d say Lemieux is no taller than 5’8″, if that. He’s roughly the same height as 5’7″ Miguel Cotto, and that’s not a good thing for a fighter competing in the middleweight division against guys that sometimes are over 6’0″.