By Dan Ambrose: Former IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux (34-3, 31 KOs) will be fighting this Saturday night on March 12 against James “The King” De La Rosa (23-3, 13 KOs) in a scheduled 10 round bout at the Olympia Theatre, in Montreal, Canada. The Lemieux vs. De La Rosa fight will be televised on Fox Deportes on Saturday night. It should be an interesting fight for as long as it lasts. Don’t blink though because you might miss it. This is probably not going to last long.
Both fighters are coming off of knockout losses in their last fights. Lemieux was stopped in the 8th round by IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin last October in Madison Square Garden in New York. De La Rosa, 28, was knocked out over a year ago in December 2014 in a 5th round knockout by the hard hitting Hugo Centeno Jr.
That was not a good performance from De La Rosa, as he was dropped by a jab from Centeno Jr. in the 1st round and then knocked out by a lead left hand in the 5th in a shot that left De La Rosa face down on the canvas.
With the 27-year-old Lemieux, you never know what you’re going to get with him. He could go out there and blast De La Rosa out in two or three rounds, or he could come apart at the seams after five or six rounds like he did in his fights against Marco Antonio Rubio and Joachim Alcine in his back to back losses in 2011. Lemieux did come back from those defeats to win nine straight victories before getting stopped by Golovkin. However, Lemieux didn’t fight anyone good during that three-year period before losing to Golovkin in 2015.
Golovkin really didn’t do anything special to beat Lemieux other than jabbing him all night long. Lemieux didn’t know how to handle Golovkin’s jab, and he didn’t have enough reach to jab with him. In hindsight, Lemieux should have put a lot of pressure on Golovkin in order to have a chance of winning the fight.
Instead, it looked like Lemieux just gave up after the first couple of rounds and let Golovkin jab his head off. Lemieux went down once in the fight from a body shot in round five. In the 8th, Lemieux was hurt by a body shot from Golovkin, and he was wilting at the time the referee stepped in and stopped the contest with Lemieux still on his feet.
De La Rosa defeated Alfredo Angulo by a 10 round decision win in September 2014. De La Rosa dropped Angulo in the 2nd round, and dominated him until late in the fight. Angulo took over in the later rounds, and appeared to have De La Rosa hurt. It was a good performance by De La Rosa, but it was also against a very slow Angulo. In De La Rosa’s next fight, he was blown out by Centeno Jr. in five one-sided rounds.
Lemieux should have little problems taking out De La Rosa. Lemieux has too much punching power for De La Rosa, and it’s not likely that this fight will go more than two of three rounds. De La Rosa started his career out as a welterweight in 2005, and he’s not a strong middleweight now that he’s moved up in weight. He would be better off fighting at 147, where there are fewer big punchers like at 160.
Lemieux cannot afford to lose this fight if he wants to stay relevant in the middleweight division. As of now, Lemieux is ranked #6 WBC, #8 IBF. Lemieux can easily get back into position to become a mandatory challenger before long. He just needs to start winning fights again. His co-promoters at Golden Boy Promotions can also set him up in a fight against their flagship fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez at some point in the near future. However, for that fight to do well on pay-per-view, it’s going to require that Lemieux put some victories behind him so that he can make boxing fans forget about how poor he looked against Golovkin. It’s going to take better opposition than De La Rosa for Lemieux to make the fans forget about how one-sided his fight with Golovkin is. However, I have doubts that Golden Boy and Eye of the Tiger promotions will want to take a risk with Lemieux by putting him in with anyone good for a while.
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