Lemieux: I’m confident I’ll be victorious over Golovkin

By Boxing News - 07/31/2015 - Comments

lemieux665By Dan Ambrose: IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs) will be an underdog when he enters the ring on October 17th against WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) in their unification fight on HBO pay-per-view from Madison Square Garden in New York.

Lemieux, 26, doesn’t care that he’s the underdog, because he feels very confident that he’s going to be victorious in this fight. Lemieux sees himself as becoming the new most feared fighter in the middleweight division after he gets through with handing Golovkin his first loss of his career.

Lemieux isn’t saying what flaw he’s observed in Golovkin’s game that he thinks he can exploit, but it’s likely that Lemieux thinks he’ll overpower Golovkin with his big shots and his youth.

“I’ve said that I don’t care who I fight, so long as they are the best, and Golovkin is the best out there in the middleweight division,” David Lemieux said. “GGG may be the most feared man in boxing, but after October 17th, there will be a new feared man in the middleweight division. Two very powerful punchers are coming into the ring. There will be blood; there will be fireworks, and I am confident I will emerge victorious.

Lemieux will need to have a good plan-B if he wants to ensure that he has a good chance of getting a victory over Golovkin. It doesn’t make sense for Lemieux to go out there and try and overpower Golovkin like he did with guys like Gabriel Rosado, Hassan N’Dam and Fernando Guerrero.

Lemieux should have learned a lesson from his losses to Marco Antonio Rubio and Joachim Alcine that he needs to learn how to box a little, because he’s not going to be able to KO everybody he faces. In contrast to Golovkin, who actually can box, Lemieux is a straight up slugger who lowers his head like a little bull and lets his hands fly.

Sometimes he gets the knockouts and sometimes he doesn’t. But when Lemieux fails to score knockouts, he looks very susceptible in the ring. That was the case in his last fight against Hassan N’Dam last June. Lemieux was unable to score a knockout despite the fact that he knocked him down four times in the first seven rounds.

When N’Dam was still standing in the 8th round, he then took the fight to Lemieux and out-boxed him in the last five rounds of the fight. N’Dam appeared to win 4 out of the last 5 rounds. Lemieux was near a total collapse just like he was in his losses to Alcine and Rubio after he failed to get a knockout in the first six rounds.

We don’t know how much punishment Golovkin can endure. If he’s unable to handle Lemieux’s power in the early rounds, then Lemieux won’t have to worry about gassing out. However, Lemieux focuses on trying to get a knockout in the first half of the fight, he’s going to get hit with some wicked shots from Golovkin, and he may not be able to handle those punches.

Lemieux is really easy to hit, which means that Golovkin will have no problems finding him with his left hooks and right hands. In Golovkin’s last fight against the elusive Willie Monroe Jr, he was still able to corner him and drop him with a big left hook in the 2nd round. After that, Golovkin backed off and let Monroe have his moments until the 5th in which Golovkin then turned up the heat again and had Monroe hurt.

In the 6th, Golovkin knocked Monroe down. After he got back up to his feet, he quit rather than letting the fight continue. As big a puncher as Lemieux is, Golovkin likely won’t let him hang around for long before looking to KO him to get him out of his hair. We could see this fight end as early as the 1st or 2nd round if Lemieux doesn’t focus on his defense, because Golovkin will be looking for a single shot knockout in this fight to get Lemieux out of there fast.



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