De La Hoya: Golovkin-Lemieux will be bombs away

By Boxing News - 10/07/2015 - Comments

1-golovkin (9)By Tim Fletcher: Promoter Oscar De La Hoya expects there to be a lot of huge bombs going off 10 days from now in the Gennady Golovkin vs. David Lemieux fight on HBO pay per view on October 17th at Madison Square Garden in New York.

The two middleweight champions will be putting up their world titles on the line for the fight, and matching each other punch for punch in what many boxing fans see as a potential candidate for fight of the year. De La Hoya needs the 26-year-old Lemieux to win this fight because he’s one of Golden Boy’s future stars.

Lemieux doesn’t have Saul “Canelo” Alvarez’s built in fan base in the United States, but he doesn’t need it because he’s got Canada right next door to support him. Lemieux is a huge star in Canada, and De La Hoya sees Lemieux as being one of big names in his Golden Boy stable if he can beat Golovkin to get to a potential fight against the winner of the Canelo vs. Miguel Cotto fight.

“It will be bombs away,” De La Hoya said about the Golovkin-Lemieux fight.

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Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler is taking a risk by making his fight against Lemieux a pay per view fight on HBO, because there’ a chance that the fight won’t bring in good numbers. If that happens, then it will likely result in Cotto, Canelo and other big names like Peter Quillin, Andy Lee and Daniel Jacobs using that as an excuse for not fighting Golovkin.

However, Loeffler feels that with the fight selling out Madison Square Garden in record time, it means that boxing fans will be interested in purchasing the fight on PPV. I don’t know if it’s going to work out that way unfortunately. Just because a fight sells out in a small section of the United States doesn’t mean that the remainder of the U.S wants to fork over $45 to see it on PPV.

“Gennady is breaking through the mainstream,” Loeffler said.

Golovkin needs wins over Lemieux, Canelo and maybe even Cotto for him to become a PPV star. I think it’s possible that Golovkin can get fights against Lemieux and Canelo, but I can’t see Cotto fighting him. The loser of the Cotto-Canelo fight definitely won’t be fighting Golovkin because they’ll be too busy trying to rebuild their careers.

“We’re looking for an explosive fight for however long it lasts,” Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez said.

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“We have brought in a new idea and strategy,” Golovkin said to fightnews.com. “He is a champion, this is a unification fight. I think he is ready. This is like a big test for me.”

It’s likely that the new strategy for Golovkin will be to box Lemieux rather than slugging it out with him. Hassan N’Dam had success against Lemieux when staying on the outside and using movement in their fight last June.

It was only when Lemieux was able to get in close against N’Dam that he was able to hurt him with punches. If N’Dam knew how to block a left hook by keep his guard up high, he would have taken away Lemieux’s left hook completely, but he looked clueless in how to stop that punch.



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