De La Hoya: Lemieux will KO Golovkin in 5 rounds

By Boxing News - 08/31/2015 - Comments

1-GolovkinLemieuxNYPC_Hoganphotos16By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya expects his fighter IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs) to make quick work of IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) in their unification fight on October 17th at Madison Square Garden in New York.

De La Hoya expects Lemieux to get to Golovkin’s chin by 5th round. He thinks it’s a fight where the 26-year-old Lemieux will get to Golovkin early. De La Hoya thinks that his other important fight between his fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto will be just as exciting, but it will lost possibly until the 10th round. De La Hoya sees Canelo getting a stoppage win by the 10th.

“I think both fights [Canelo vs. Cotto & Golovkin vs. Lemieux] are going to be spectacular,” De La Hoya said to Fighthub. “The difference is one is going to be longer. The other [Golovkin-Lemieux] might last 3, 4 or 5 rounds, and I got Lemieux knocking Golovkin out. This one [Cotto-Canelo] might last 8, 9, 10 rounds and I got my guy [Canelo] winning,” De La Hoya said.

If Lemieux wins this fight then it’s going to be a big surprise to a lot of boxing fans, because he doesn’t have the experience at the amateur level that Golovkin has. Lemieux is just a slugger with a lot of punching power that has been matched up against weak opposition through much of the career.

Lemieux failed when he was pushed up a level in 2011, when he was beaten by Marco Antonio Rubio and Joachim Alcine. But since then, Lemieux has shown some improvement in beating Hassan N’Dam, Gabriel Rosado and Fernando Guerrero. Those are good B-level middleweights, and Lemieux proved that he was better than all of them. However, Golovkin is a much better fighter than those three guys, and it’s very likely that Lemieux is going to find out the hard way that he’s not ready for a guy at his level.

“It’s a 2 to 3 round job. I think Golovkin absolutely destroys him [Lemieux],” says Darren Barker to IFL TV. “If I was still fighting, I’d be happy to fight Lemieux. He can whack and he’s dangerous. I saw an interview with Golovkin. They played it like he’s scared. I suppose he’s cautious that he [Lemieux] can whack a bit. That’s all he’s got. Golovkin is on another level. He’s ridiculously good. Not only can he whack, he’s got boxing skills. He’s phenomenal. He’s unbelievable. Like I said, it’s a 2-3 round job. The knockout percentage is in the 90s. It’ll be a shocker if it goes farther than that. It’s a fight that brings people out. They want to see that. It’s just that they want to see people get hurt. We’re nuts as a race. He’s [Lemieux] a decent fighter. He’s a world champion. Hassan N’Dam, he’s a good fighter. But Golovkin is on another level,” Barker said.

I think Barker’s prediction about the Golovkin-Lemieux fight might be closer to reality than what De La Hoya is predicting. De La Hoya seems to be coming from a pipe dream angle in seeing the fight. He badly wants and needs Lemieux to win this fight, because if he can get past Golovkin, he’ll have two flagship fighters in his Golden Boy Promotions stable that he can count on as revenue streams.

If De La Hoya chooses to match Canelo with Lemieux, it would be a huge fight if Lemieux first takes Golovkin’s scalp on October 17th But if Lemieux gets blasted out in 2 to 3 rounds like Barker is predicting, then it’s going to be a big blow to De La Hoya and his Golden Boy stable. I think the result of that will be De La Hoya choosing to keep Canelo far, far away from Golovkin to make sure that his last top fighter doesn’t get knocked out too by him.

Lemieux and Canelo’s career won’t be over with if/when they get knocked out by Golovkin. They can still be successful fighters and make good money for De La Hoya. But it’ll take a while for Canelo and Lemieux to come back from their losses to Golovkin. The boxing fans will still watch their fights, but in smaller numbers until they forget about how they were battered and beaten by Golovkin.



Comments are closed.