De La Hoya still insisting Lemieux take mandatory defense for next fight

By Boxing News - 06/25/2015 - Comments

delahoya789By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions president Oscar De La Hoya is still insisting that his fighter IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux has a mandatory defense that he needs to get out of the way first in his next fight despite Tom Loeffler, the promoter for WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs), having made contact with the International Boxing Federation and being told that the Golovkin vs. Lemieux fight can go ahead next rather than Lemieux’s mandatory defense.

De La Hoya’s insistence that the Lemieux must fight his IBF mandatory next comes across like De La Hoya prefers that he take that fight rather than taking a risky fight against Golovkin that Lemieux could very well lose.

“Lemieux has to make a mandatory defense. We won’t know until later on, in the next few weeks,” De La Hoya said to RingTV.com. “We’ll see what the IBF decides. Obviously we’re not shying away from a Triple-G clash down the road. First things first, though.”

This is interesting because Loeffler had already contacted the IBF earlier this week and found out from them that they’ll let the Golovkin-Lemieux fight take place next.

IBF confirmed no issue with @GGGBoxing vs @lemieuxboxing in unification fight next, #BestFightingBest lets do this @GoldenBoyBoxing,” Loeffler said on his Twitter.

You did notice that Loeffler sent the Tweet to Golden Boy Promotions, which means that there was a pretty good chance that De La Hoya saw the message from Loeffler. It makes you wonder whether Oscar really wants the fight between Lemieux and Golovkin. To be sure, De La Hoya was talking a lot about wanting to setup the fight between his fighter and Golovkin, but he said that he couldn’t because he had a mandatory defense to get out of the way first.

It’s quite possible that De La Hoya was merely name dropping by saying that Lemieux was ready to fight Golovkin. By mentioning Golovkin’s name in the same sentence as Lemieux, it got his Canadian fighter a lot of attention from hardcore and casual boxing fans, who then assumed that De La Hoya was serious about wanting to match Lemieux tough by putting him in with Golovkin. However, I don’t think that’s the case at all.

De La Hoya looks like he’s going to ramrod the mandatory defense in for Lemieux rather than putting him in with a bigger fight against Golovkin. He might think that he’s playing it safe and getting an easy payday for Lemieux by avoiding the Golovkin fight, but this could very well backfire on De La Hoya if Tureano Johnson winds up as the IBF mandatory challenger.

If that happens, I think Johnson will wear Lemieux down and knock him out in six to eight rounds. The thing is the money that Lemieux will get for a fight against Johnson will likely be far less than what he could get for a unification match against Golovkin.

If Lemieux loses his IBF title against Tureano Johnson, then a fight against Golovkin will not happen. De La Hoya won’t bother matching a beaten Lemieux with Golovkin because he’ll need to rebuild his career.

It took four years to rebuild Lemieux’s career after his back to back defeats at the hands of Marco Antonio Rubio and Joachim Alcine in 2011. I think it might take at least three years to bring Lemieux back after a loss to Johnson.



Comments are closed.