De La Hoya: Lemieux won’t fight Golovkin until 2016

By Boxing News - 06/23/2015 - Comments

lemieux74By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions president Oscar De La Hoya says that his fighter IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs) won’t be facing WBA champion Gennady Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) until late 2016, because Lemieux has a mandatory defense that he needs to take care of at the end of 2015.

The opponent for Lemieux’s mandatory will come down to Sam Soliman, Eamonn O’Kane or Tureano Johnson. For Lemieux’s sake, he had better hope that it’s not Johnson because he could prove to a very, very tough opponent for him.

It might not even take Golovkin to end Lemieux’s short title run. Tureano Johnson could be the one to do it.

Lemieux, 26, is riding high after his 12 round decision win over #1 IBF Hassan N’Dam last Saturday night at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada. Lemieux dropped N’Dam four times in the fight and fought well in the first seven rounds. After the 7th, N’Dam took over and dominated the last five rounds.

Lemieux has until December the 20th to defend his IBF title against his mandatory challenger, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN.

“David’s next fight will be the mandatory,” De La Hoya said to ESPN.com. “Do we want to put him in with GGG? Absolutely, yes. Positively, yes. But it will have to wait until next year because of the mandatory.”

Soliman faces Dominic Wade this Friday night. If Soliman wins, then he faces O’Kane in an IBF eliminator bout with the winner facing Lemieux. If Soliman loses to Wade, which is highly likely given Soliman’s age, knee problems and lack of power, then O’Kane will face Tureano Johnson with the winner facing Lemieux. I predict that Johnson will emerge as Lemieux’s mandatory and that’s going to lead to Lemieux having all kinds of problems in that fight.

De La Hoya is confident that Lemieux will hold onto his IBF 160lb title long enough to face Golovkin in the 2nd half of next year, and he believes he can beat Golovkin. De La Hoya says he’s spotted a weakness in Golovkin’s game. He says the Kazakhstan star can’t fight while going backwards.

The problem is that there’s no one that can make Golovkin go backwards. If Lemieux tries it, he’s going to have to go through some withering fire and fight at a fast pace that he’s likely not suited for. We saw Lemieux run out of gas against N’Dam, who was mostly running around the ring. The movement had Lemieux exhausted in the last five rounds of the fight.

“He [Lemieux] hits much harder than GGG,” De La Hoya said. “One thing I found out about GGG that I’m sure several experts know is that GGG cannot fight going backward. He cannot fight going back. And he gets marked up.”

I don’t agree that Lemieux hits harder than Golovkin. If that were the case, then Lemieux would have knocked N’Dam out rather than just knocking him down four times. If Lemieux had the better power than Golovkin, then he would have finished off Gabriel Rosado quicker than Golovkin did. Rosado ran from Golovkin for most of their fight until getting stopped in the 7th. Rosado stood and slugged with Lemieux and lasted nine rounds.



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