By Tim Fletcher: IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs) plans on leaving a lot of boxing fans totally speechless on October 17th after he gets through with the older 33-year-old IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs).
Lemieux says that you can’t underestimate people in the sport of boxing, and he obviously has been underestimated by a great number of fans, people in the media, and fighters. Many fans still remember how bad Lemieux looked in his losses to Marco Antonio Rubio and Joachim Alcine from 2011, and that’s one of the reasons why they’re not giving him too much of a chance to score an upset in a little over a week from now. Without those defeats, the Golovkin-Lemieux fight would be truly a 50-50 affair.
“You cannot underestimate anybody, especially not at this level. But let people think or say what they want. It’s for me to prove them otherwise. I’m coming to win,” Lemieux said to Fighthype.com.
It’s definitely up to Lemieux to prove that he’s better than what people think he is, because they have a good reason for underestimating him. When you fail at something, especially in boxing, people stop believing in you. Lemieux has won his last 10 fights in the past two years, but he’s not beaten anyone on the level of Golovkin.
Lemieux’s biggest wins during that time was against Hassan N’Dam and Gabriel Rosado. Those were good wins, but not at the level of Golovkin or some of the other top fighters in the 160lb division. We don’t know how good Lemieux is or if he’s improved since his back to back defeats four years ago.
Golovkin has built up a huge following in the Mexican community with his self-titled “Mexican style” of fighting. It’s going to be a real test for Golovkin to see if he can use his “Mexican style” of fighting against a big puncher like Lemieux. It could be dangerous for him to fight like that, but if he does, he’ll endear himself to a lot of boxing fans because they want to see all-action fights and lots of blood on October 17th.
“The Mexican style that we have been trying to develop with him is just more of an entertaining style,” Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez told Yahoo Sports. “It’s a style that is reminiscent of fighters in the past like [Roberto] Duran, [Salvador] Sanchez, [Julio Cesar] Chavez and even Oscar’s [De La Hoya] fights where guys stood in the middle of the ring, went at each other and gave the fans the kind of fight that they deserve for the money that they’re paying.”
It’s going to be a difficult fight for Lemieux if Golovkin does use his “Mexican style” of fighting against him on October 17th because Lemieux was clearly bothered by the punching power from Rubio four years ago. Lemieux can dish it out alright, but his ability to take a punch would seem to be no better than the guys that he’s been knocking out for the last four years.
Comments are closed.