Lemieux: I was expecting more power from Golovkin

By Boxing News - 10/18/2015 - Comments

1-GolovkinLemieux_HoganphotosBy Tim Fletcher: Former IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux (34-3, 31 KOs) said he was expecting more power last night from IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “Triple G” Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) in their unification fight at Madison Square Garden in New York.

The fight, which was televised by HBO pay-per-view, was stopped in the 8th round by referee Steve Willis on account of Lemiuex absorbing punishment along the ropes and bleeding from his nose. Before the stoppage, Lemieux had landed a big right hand to the head of Golovkin only moments before.

Lemieux was still fighting back and he might have been able to make it out of the round if Willis hadn’t stepped in to stop the fight. Willis obviously noticed Lemieux’s body language after he was hit with a left to the body in the final flurry from Golovkin.

The shot hurt Lemieux, and Golovkin would have likely continued to land to the body if the fight had been stopped. Whether Lemieux would have been able to take those punches is unclear.

“I would have loved to have given the people a better fight,” Lemieux said at the post-fight press conference. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing him in the near future somewhere down the line. But I feel the fight was stopped a little bit too early. He’s a great champion. I have a lot of respect for him. There was a little body shot. I took a knee and was hit behind the head,” Lemiuex said.

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In fairness to Golovkin, he really wasn’t throwing a lot of power shots in the fight. It wasn’t until the 7th and 8th rounds where Golovkin started to feel comfortable enough to throw his big power shots. Before that, he was focusing more on just jabbing and keeping out of range of Lemieux’s big left hook, which is his primary weapon.

Golovkin forced Lemieux to try and beat him with his right hand, and that wasn’t going to happen because Lemieux didn’t use it that much in the fight Golovkin wasn’t sitting down on his power shots the way he’s done in his past fights because it was too dangerous for him to wind up with everything he had in his punches.

“His jab is a very good punch. He got me with the jab,” Lemieux said. “That was his best punch of the night. Actually, I was expecting a bit more power from him, but he had a very good jab. He’s a very good fighter. I could have done a lot more in the fight. I wanted to extend the fight a bit longer, but the referee didn’t see it the same way. He had a very good jab. His jab was very effective tonight,” Lemieux said.

Golovkin did land a huge left hook in the 3rd round that sent Lemieux bouncing off the ropes from the impact. If Golovkin had landed more of those shots in the fight, I think Lemieux would have felt different about his punching power. But it was otherwise too dangerous for Golovkin to load up with his power shots, because it would have put him at risk of getting nailed by one of Lemieux’s big left hooks.



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