David Lemeiux vs. Curtis Stevens negotiations stalling out

By Boxing News - 08/30/2016 - Comments

Image: David Lemeiux vs. Curtis Stevens negotiations stalling out

By Chris Williams: It looks like the much talked about fight between former IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux and Curtis Stevens won’t be taking place on October 22 on HBO as boxing fans had hoped. The negotiations between the two fighters have hit a stall, and it appears that the fight won’t be salvaged with help from HBO.

I had a feeling that Lemieux vs. Stevens wouldn’t happen when I first heard of the fight. I could not see Lemieux facing a live body like Stevens, because he’s too dangerous and would likely knock Lemieux into next week.

I get the feeling that Lemieux is being saved up for an eventual fight against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Until that fight happens, I can’t see Lemieux being matched against anyone even halfway good.

They would need to come up with whatever money that is needed to make the fight happen. There’s still a possibility of the fight taking place if HB can come through. The Lemieux-Stevens fight was supposed to be taking place on October 2nd at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada. Lemieux and Stevens are said to be eager to face each other, according to ESPN, but it’s going to take help from HBO to make the fight happen.

With the awful fight that HBO televised recently between Terence Crawford and Viktor Postol, you would think that they would be eager to show a good match-up between Lemieux and Stevens, because this is a fight that would almost surely be an exciting affair. Goodness knows, the Crawford-Postol fight was about as fun as watching paint dry in the afternoon sun.

The worst thing about that fight was it was on HBO pay-per-view rather than on regular HBO. It was just awful fight. After watching that fight, if I never see either of those two fighters in the ring again it’ll be too soon. That’s why it would be nice if HBO helped make a good fight between Lemieux and Stevens happen, because this at least is an interesting match-up.

“Stevens wants to fight Lemieux and Lemieux wants to fight Stevens,” said Lemieux’s manager Camile Estephan to RingTV.com. “But we would have to depend on TV for that and the TV is not done yet. So there’s other opponents that we’re speaking to given the fact that we haven’t finalized the deal with the TV, and it’s a fight that takes on a TV budget. So that’s where we’re at.”

That doesn’t sound good at all. If Lemieux’s management looking to now find an opponent that fits on a TV budget, then this could wind up being a mismatch like the recent one we saw between Lemieux and Glen Tapia last May. Lemieux stopped the over-matched, ring rusty Tapia in the fourth round of a painfully one-sided fight from start to finish. That wasn’t even a fair fight. It was like hunting with your prey stuck in a cage right in front of you.

If Lemieiux’s management has to select someone that will fit a budget for TV, I can only imagine what kind of opponent is dragged into the ring to fight him. Lemieux has only had two good opponents in the last five years in his fights against Gennady Golovkin and Hassan N’Dam. The rest of the guys Lemieux fought were pretty poor, and I include Gabriel Rosado in this mix. I don’t rate him as a quality fighter.

Lemieux recently had knee surgery last July to repair an injury that occurred in his mismatch against Tapia last May. The knee is said to be fine now.

Lemieux looked terrible in getting knocked out by Golovkin last year in October. It wasn’t even a fight. Golovkin jabbed and pot-shotted Lemieux for seven rounds before stopping him in the 8th. I suppose that Golovkin could have ended the fight a lot sooner if he wanted to, but he took his time and played it safe for the most part.

Lemieux is ranked #4 WBC, #4 WBO, #7 IBF at middleweight. I don’t think Lemieux wants any part of Golovkin again. That’s not a good match-up for Lemieux. A fight against WBO champion Billy Joe Saunders would be a good one for Lemieux. However, Saunders appears to be on course for a fight against Saul Canelo Alvarez in the near future, so that leaves Lemieux without a fight against him.