This expert advice that De La Hoya and Hopkins could prove valuable for the 26-year-old Lemieux, or it could be a total waste of time. We do know that De La Hoya has given his fighters advice in the past, and it’s not helped them.
Saul “Canelo” Alvarez was given advice by De La Hoya in how to beat Floyd Mayweather Jr. in their 2013 fight, and it didn’t help the red-haired Canelo one bit to win the fight. The question is will it help the Canadian Lemieux beat Golovkin?
We’re giving him [Lemieux] tips here and there, me and Bernard [Hopkins], but he knows what to do,” De La Hoya said. Lemieux is an excellent, excellent boxer. It’s incredible. So I can’t wait to see him use his boxing abilities along with his power in October,” De La Hoya said.
"@lemieuxboxing is a category 5 hurricane; he's here to knock your head off" @oscardelahoya #GolovkinLemieux Oct. 17 pic.twitter.com/ZvmjaL3dmC
— GoldenBoyPromotions (@GoldenBoyBoxing) October 1, 2015
For De La Hoya and Hopkins’ advice to work, it’s going to require for Lemieux to fix his nonexistent defense, because he’s just too easy to hit right now for him to be able to pull off an upset over Golovkin unless the Kazakhstan fighter crowds Lemieux to get within his short armed punching distance.
Most of Lemieux’s power is generated from a very short range because he doesn’t have the arm length to land his big shots from the longer distances. Golovkin does like to crowd his opponents to set up shop for his own big shots, but I don’t think he’s going to do it in this fight.
Golovkin wasn’t afraid to get in close against Matthew Macklin, Martin Murray and Willie Monroe Jr., because none of those guys had big punching power. But in Golovkin’s fight against Curtis Stevens, he fought mostly on the outside in order to keep out of range of his big power shots.
The only advice that would likely be useful from Hopkins and De La Hoya would be for Lemieux to go after Golovkin as hard as possible in the first half of the fight. If they’re aware of Lemieux’s flaws in his game, they’ll both know that he gets tired and starts to lose steam on his punches by the 6th round.
If Lemieux doesn’t get an opponent out by the 6th, it sometimes ends badly for Lemieux. Even when it goes well, he still tends to fade in the last half of his fights. If Hopkins and De La Hoya advise Lemieux to try and box Golovkin, then they’ve given him the wrong advice because Lemieux won’t do well trying to box a technical fighter like Golovkin.
Lemieux doesn’t have the reach or the boxing skills for him to be able to box Golovkin. If he does that, then he’s just going to get picked off and embarrassed all night long.
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