Lemieux: I’ve got what it takes to beat Golovkin

By Boxing News - 10/11/2015 - Comments

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By Dan Ambrose: With now less than a week to go before the October 17th fight between IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs) and IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs), it’s readily apparent that the 26-year-old Lemieux is very, very confident going into their fight on HBO PPV.

During the Face off with Max Kellerman last night, Lemieux spoke like someone who had sized Golovkin up and already feels that he’s going to be the 33-year-old Kazakhstan fighter. Lemieux recently said he saw weakness in Golovkin when the two of them stood face to face.

I believe that Lemieux is getting a lot of his confidence from his interactions with Golovkin, and the fact that he hasn’t come off aggressive or intimidating in any way like some fighters.

I believe I’ve got what it takes to beat Golovkin. It takes what I’ve got,” Lemieux said. “Bring it to 100-1. It’s not going to make a difference on the 17th,” Lemieux said about him being the underdog for the fight. “I’m going in there. I don’t look at the odds. I don’t look at the numbers. They make no difference. I’ve had many ups and downs I’ve come back from, and now I’m up and I’m stepping up. If he’s the goliath, and I’m David, then we got to do what we got to do. I’m going to do my best.”

Lemieux is the underdog in part because the odds-makers remember how Lemieux was beaten by Joachim Alcine and Marco Antonio Rubio in the past four years ago in 2011. Golovkin recently destroyed Rubio in two rounds last year in October 2014. Rubio was also recently beaten by Anthony Dirrell by a one-sided 10 round unanimous decision last September.

It doesn’t look good that Lemieux struggled against a fighter that Golovkin was able to destroy and Dirrell beat with ease. The odds-makers also no doubt are factoring in how tired Lemieux looked recently in his 12 round decision win over Hassan N’Dam. Lemieux fought well in the first 7 rounds of the fight in knocking N’Dam down four times, but after the 7th, Lemieux lost almost every round from the 8th to the 12th.

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Lemieux’s stamina problems were clearly there. If he hadn’t knocked N’Dam down four times, then he would have lost the fight because the judges scored it 115-109, 115-109, and 114-110.

“At times, he gets a little complacent when it’s too easy for him. If you recall, the 1st and 2nd rounds were easily Gennady’s,” Sanchez said about Golovkin’s recent fight against Willie Monroe. It was in the 3rd or 4th round that he [Golovkin] went to sleep a little bit. He made it a fight so that fans would enjoy it. He’s not going to do that with David. David is a different can of worms here. He’s coming to protect something. Well, I think it’s going four rounds, but I’ll tell you why I said it. I think it’s a Hagler-Hearns fight. Just the way it’s selling out tells people this is going to be that kind of fight, and that’s the kind of fight we can look back and say ‘I was there’ or ‘I watched it live on TV.’ It’s going to be a shootout,” Sanchez said.

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“It is. I love it,” Lemieux said. “The harder, the better. I don’t want an easy way. I want the hardest way. But after that, I’ll be proud of it.”

Lemieux says he wants the fight to be harder so that he feels better about his accomplishment afterwards, but that might not work in his favor. Lemieux could find out quickly that it’s too difficult a task, and then wind up getting routed completely by Golovkin. I think there’s a good chance that Lemieux might get blown out in 4 rounds or less like Golovkin’s trainer Abel Sanchez has predicted. Sanchez has been dead on correct in his predictions of Golovkin’s previous fights against Willie Monroe Jr, Martin Murray, Matthew Macklin, Daniel Geale, Marco Antonio Rubio and Curtis Stevens. There’s no reason not to believe that Sanchez won’t be right about the Lemieux fight. Sanchez obviously sees something in Lemieux’s fighting style that tells him it’s going to be an easy fight. Perhaps one of the reasons why Sanchez sees this being an easy fight for Golovkin is because he’s always done really well during sparring when he’s fought aggressive fighters that would right at him the way that Lemieux will be doing. Those are the type of fighters that Golovkin destroys immediately. The fighters that give Golovkin some problems are the ones that move around the ring. Lemieux doesn’t have the ability to move.



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