Lemieux injures right hand, fight with Torres off

By Boxing News - 01/08/2013 - Comments

lemieux2By Allan Fox: The powerful middleweight David Lemieux (28-2, 27 KO’s) has suffered an injury to his right hand while training for his February 8th fight against Jose Miguel Torres (26-5, 23 KO’s). The extent of the injury is bad enough to where the 24-year-old Lemieux won’t be able to take the fight, which had been scheduled to be televised on ESPN2’s Friday Night Fights.

According to Dan Rafael at ESPN, Lemieux injured his fourth metacarpal on his right hand and he’ll need at least two weeks of no activity so the injured hand can heal. It’ll be looked at again at that point to make sure there are no lingering problems.

The fight card will still reportedly take place and Lemieux’s promoter Yvon Michel is looking for a new main event to replace the canceled Lemieux vs. Torres fight.

This was supposed to have been a step up fight for Lemieux, as Torres has excellent power and good boxing skills. It would have been a good test to see where Lemieux is at in terms of his progress after suffering two disappointing losses in 2011 to Marco Antonio Rubio and Joachim Alcine. It’s clear now that the 24-year-old Lemieux wasn’t ready for that level of opposition at that time and he really needed to ease his way into fighting guys at that level.

Lemieux went from fighting poor opposition to world class in one fight, and he just wasn’t ready. This time his management are bringing him a long much more carefully and he’s been responding well, winning his last three fights by knockout against Juandiel Zepeda, Alvaro Gaona and Albert Ayrapetyan.

Lemieux has great potential if his team can figure out how to teach him some defense and build up his stamina a little. Besides those areas where he needs improvement, Lemieux’s reach, or lack thereof, is going to be a problem for him at middleweight. He’s got the reach, 64”, of fighters in the lightweight and below divisions and that’s going to be a problem for him. Even lightweight Adrien Broner has a long reach than Lemieux at 71”, and there are quite a few fighters in the lower divisions with a longer reach.



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