De La Rosa says 40% offer was never made by Lemieux’s management

By Boxing News - 03/12/2016 - Comments

Image: De La Rosa says 40% offer was never made by Lemieux's managementBy Jeff Aranow: James De La Rosa was supposed to face former IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux tonight in a 10 round fight at the Olympia in Montreal, Canada. However, Lemieux came in overweight last Friday at the weigh-in for the fight. He was supposed to weigh 163lbs for the catch-weight, but he came in at 165.6lbs.

Unfortunately, De La Rosa and Lemieux’s management were unable to negotiate to have the fight go ahead. The fight was then cancelled. There were reports from the Montreal Gazette that Lemieux’s management offered De La Rosa a 40% increase with his purse.

De La Rosa sent a tweet today saying that they tried twice to negotiate with them, and there wasn’t a 40% increase in their purse. Further, De La Rosa thinks Lemieux never even attempted to make the 163lb catch-weight for the fight.

It doesn’t make sense that Lemieux and De La Rosa weren’t able to workout the weight, especially if De La Rosa was supposedly offered a 40 increase in his purse. That doesn’t sound like something too many fighters would turn down. The only people who know whether the 40 percent offer was made or not was Lemieux’s promoter and the management for De La Rosa. It would have been a good fight to see.

The boxing public were interested in seeing the fight, as it would give given a good indication whether Lemieux has improved since his loss to Gennady Golovkin last October. Lemieux fought timidly in that bout, and was stopped in the 8th round. De La Rosa obviously isn’t Golovkin, but it still would have given fans a chance to see if Lemieux is looking better.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WVE-2tzhLNg

There’s no word yet when Lemieux will be fighting again. This might be a good chance for his co-promoters at Golden Boy Promotions to add Lemieux to the undercard of the Amir Khan vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fight card on May 7 on HBO PPV. Having Lemieux on the undercard would be a great addition to the card. Former light welterweight world title challenger Lucas Matthysse pulled out of the card last week due to an eye problem.

Interim WBA heavyweight champion Luis “The Real King Kong” Ortiz is one big name on the undercard, but they need more names to attract interest. The 27-year-old Lemieux would be a perfect addition to the card if they can get him a good opponent by that time. HBO would have to approve whoever the opponent that Golden Boy and Eye of the Tiger Promotions finds for Lemieux. HBO will no doubt want a quality opponent because this is the final fight of Lemieux’s existing contract with them.

Lemieux needs to work on his diet so that he doesn’t miss weight in the future. If this had been a world title fight that he failed to make weight for, it would have been bad. Lemieux might need to think about moving up in weight to super middleweight if he’s going to continue to struggle to make weight at 160. It’s possible that Lemieux will be stronger once he moves up a weight class.



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