Stevenson faces George, Lemieux battles Gaona on October 12th

By Boxing News - 09/24/2012 - Comments

Image: Stevenson faces George, Lemieux battles Gaona	on October 12thBy Jason Kim: next month, super middleweight contenders Adonis Stevenson (18-1, 15 KO’s) and Don George (23-2-1, 20 KO’s) will be meeting to fight in an IBF super middleweight eliminator bout at the Bell Centre, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The winner of the George-Stevenson fight will get a shot against IBF champion Carl Froch possibly next year.

Stevenson, 35, really hasn’t faced the kind of puncher that George is since getting stopped by Darnell Boone in the 2nd round in 2010. Stevenson wasn’t ready for that kind of power and folded quickly against Boone. George can punch at least as hard as Boone when he’s sitting down on his punches.

George’s problem is that he’s not as fast as Boone, and it’s easy to see the shots coming. However, if George is able to land his heavy shots with any regularity then this will be a very difficult fight for Stevenson to win.

He’s got to try and get George out of there early before his power starts to accumulate. The good thing with the southpaw Stevenson is his speed. He’s able get guys out of there quick because he hits them with shots they don’t see coming. His power makes him even more dangerous. Stevenson will be fighting one of his better opponents in George, and it’s unknown how he’ll do in this fight against someone as good as him. George is little more than a good slugger, but he’s definitely a step up for Stevenson from what he’s been facing.

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On the undercard of the George vs. Stevenson fight will be 23-year-old former middleweight contender David Lemieux (26-2, 25 KO’s) facing Alvaro Gaona (11-1, 7 KO’s0 in a scheduled 10 round bout. Lemieux has lost two out of his last three fights and is trying to put his once promising career back together after suffering losses to Marco Antonio Rubio and Joachim Alcine last year.

In hindsight, it seems pretty clear that Lemieux shouldn’t have been put in with the hard hitting and much more experienced Rubio after having faced so many soft touches during his career. What Lemieux badly needed was to slowly bring him up against slightly better 2nd tier fighters that could expand his skills. But Lemieux’s whole game strategy was flawed to begin with, because he never really learned how to fight because of all the weak opponents he was fed. Lemieux has legitimate power, but he used that power to blow out all of his weak opposition in one or two rounds instead of using those fights to improve his stamina, defense and overall boxing skills so that he would have those tools ready for when he finally faced someone a little better.

Now Lemieux starting the way he should have by being matched against guys that he can slowly improve again. However, as of his last fight against Jaudiel Zepeda, Lemieux is still just looking to blast his opposition out immediately instead of learning from them. He destroyed Zepeda in two rounds, and will probably do the same thing with Gaona. Rubio and Alcine both showed how bad Lemieux’s conditioning was by simply lasting until the second half of the fight and then completely taking over after Lemieux gassed out.



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