By Dan Ambrose: Former IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux (34-3, 31 KOs) will be returning to the ring in two months from now to face the 28-year-old ring rusty James De La Rosa (23-3, 13 KOs) on March 12 at the Olympia Theatre, in Montreal, Canada. The fight isn’t expected to be televised on HBO. It’s likely that the network is waiting for a more compelling match-up before they televise Lemieux again.
De La Rosa is a disappointing choice for Lemieux, because there had been talk that Lemieux could be facing Willie Monroe Jr. or Curtis Stevens next. Those are unquestionable tougher opponents than De La Rosa, who has not fought since being knocked out in the 5th round in December 2014.
De La Rosa was knocked from a hard left hand to the head that put him down face first on the canvas. Centeno Jr. also dropped De La Rosa with a jab in the 1st round. There is no shame in getting knocked out by a big puncher like Centeno Jr., but you have to wonder why De La Rosa didn’t fight at all in 2015. Centeno Jr. is not the same kind of puncher that Lemieux is, and it’s probably not going to go too well for De La Rosa in this fight.
It would have been interesting to see Lemieux matched up against WBC middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez in his next fight instead of De La Rosa. Golden Boy Promotions co-promotes Lemieux, and that would be been an intriguing fight for the boxing fans. However, it looks like Golden Boy is going to slowly rebuild Lemieux’s career to either have win a world title or use him as an opponent for Canelo.
It doesn’t look like Lemieux’s promoters at Golden Boy and the Eye of the Tiger wants to take any risks with his career by putting him in with someone that can be a good test for him. De La Rosa is the type of opponent that Lemieux has been feasting on before he was beaten by Golovkin. It would have been good if his promoters had at least put Lemieuix in with some decent contender instead of a weaker guy like De La Rosa, who doesn’t belong in the same ring with him.
#TEAMLEMEIUX #HUNGRY pic.twitter.com/LIbrzLNjls
— Eye of The Tiger M (@EOTMVD) January 16, 2016
This will be the first fight for #6 IBF, #6 WBC Lemieux since his eighth round knockout loss to IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin last October on HBO pay-per-view at Madison Square Garden in New York. Lemieux talked a good game in the run up to the fight, but he was no match for Golovkin’s powerful jab and body punching. Golovkin did not land many power shots to the head of Lemieux in that fight. Golovkin played it safe by focusing on jabbing the shorter armed Lemieux from the outside and going after his body to land hard body shots when the two of them came close. Lemieux was dropped in the fifth from a body shot from Golovkin. In the eighth round, Golovkin stopped Lemieux on his feet after hurting him with a body shot.
Lemieux will likely have very little problems beating De La Rosa. As long as Lemieux goes after De La Rosa early in the fight to keep him from gaining confidence, he should be able to win this fight easily.
De La Rosa looked good in beating the slower Alfredo Angulo by a 10 round unanimous decision in September 2014 in the best win of his career. Angulo was too slow for De La Rosa in that fight and made him look good. When Angulo did apply some pressure on De La Rosa in the middle rounds, he had some success. Angulo’s only problem was he was so slow with his punches. It made it easy for De La Rosa to land his punches at will and get away before Angulo could fire off one of his incredibly slow shots.
Lemieux needs to use De La Rosa as practice in being more aggressive, because he really blew it by fighting so passively in his loss to Golovkin. If Lemieux is going to be successful in fighting against 1st tier fighters like Golovkin, then he’s going to need to be able to show some courage by attacking all out rather than being kept on the outside all night long with a jab.
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