Lemieux fails to impress against Rios

By Boxing News - 10/23/2016 - Comments

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By Eric Baldwin: Former IBF 160lb belt holder David Lemieux (36-3, 32 KOs) was supposed to impress in his fight against journeyman opponent Christian Fabian Rios (21-8-3, 6 KOs), but instead he labored to a 10 round unanimous decision last Saturday night in front of a large crowd of supporters at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada.

For his troubles, Lemieux was hurt twice by left hands from the southpaw Rios in the 2nd and 3rd rounds. Lemieux ended up with a badly bruised right eye. Rios appeared to win at least two rounds of the fight; although judges gave him no credit for it by scoring the fight 100-90, 99-91 and 100-90.

Lemieux landed the harder shots all night long, but Rios’ weaker punches seemed to bother him. The left hands that Rios was landing in the fight had Lemieux looking flustered at times. If Rios had a little more power, he would have had a great chance of winning.

Lemieux never hurt Rios with any of his shots in the fight despite landing a lot of hard punches to the body. Rios did a pretty good job of avoiding most of the head shots that Lemieux threw, but he was still hit with quite a few.

Late in the 2nd round, Rios nailed Lemieux with a hard left to the head that caused him to stumble backwards. Lemieux retreated and looked in distress for a moment. It was like watching Lemieux fight Gennady “GGG” Golovkin for that brief period.

If Rios had the power and the game to go after Lemieux, he would have had a good chance of knocking him out.

Lemieux trapped Rios in the corner in round three and teed off on him with shots to the head and body. Rios picked off a lot of the punches thrown at him, but he couldn’t get out of the way of the body shots. They were landing. Lemieux was trying hard to get a knockout, but it wasn’t happening because Rios did a great job of blocking the punches.

In the last minute of the 4th round, Rios landed several clean left hands to the head of Lemieux. Those shots seemed to get the attention of Lemieux.

Rios came out fast at the start of the 5th round and connected with four booming left hands to the head of Lemieux. This energized Lemieux, who came back strong to land some body shots.

In the 6th, Lemieux appeared to increase the pace of the fight, as he attacked Rios with brutal shots to the he and body. This was by far the most punishing round of the fight for Rios. He took a lot of heavy blows in getting trapped against the ropes. After getting hit by one particularly hard body shot, Rios winced in pain. He was bothered by the shot.

Rios used a lot of movement in the 7th round to avoid taking punishment from Lemieux. It worked up to a point, but he was still getting hit.

In the 8th round, Rios went on the attack and nailed Lemieux with some solid blows to the head. Lemieux only smiled, and continued his attacks. Rios kept pouring it on, but he didn’t have the power to bother Lemieux.

Rios was very busy in the 9th round in throwing a massive amount of punches to the head of Lemieux. He didn’t have the power to hurt him, but he was landing so many of them. Rios fought well enough to win the round. Lemieux punched Rios in the back while he was moving around the ring, and the referee failed to warn him. When Rios let Lemieux know that he was hitting him in the back, the Montreal crowd booed him, as if to say that punching in the back was fair game.

Rios attempted to stand in the pocket in the 10th round to try for a knockout, but Lemieux was too strong for him, and he had to get on his bike after landing a lot of shots.

“With this win, David Lemieux has one again demonstrated himself to be a dynamic and resilient fighter,” said Golden Boy Promotions CEO Oscar De La Hoya. “This additional victory will open new doors for Lemieux, and we can’t wait to see what the next champion in his boxing career will bring.”

Lemieux is ranked #4 WBC, #4 WBO, #7 IBF. He won’t stand a chance in a rematch against IBF/IBO/WBA/WBC middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin. The only guy that Lemieux has a chance of beating is WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders. However, he’s been ordered by the World Boxing Organization to fight back to back mandatory challengers, and Lemieux is ranked only #4 by the WBO. Lemieux is going to need to wait for Saunders to get those mandatory defenses out of the way first. The best chance that Lemieux has for an important fight is if De La Hoya lets him fight Golden Boy’s biggest star Saul Canelo Alvarez in early 2017. That would be a good fight for the boxing fans.

Lemieux, 27, weighed in at 163lbs for the fight but he looked noticeably flabby around his midsection. It didn’t matter for this fight because he was matched against a less than dangerous 33-year-old Rios. It still didn’t look good that Lemieux had gone through an entire training camp and failed to take off weight around his midsection. It would be interesting go know what weight Lemieux started training camp at, because he still looked out of shape.

If Golden Boy wants to build Lemieux back up, then he needs to face better opposition than Rios. However, the problem that Golden Boy has is if they match Lemieux against someone too good, he’ll lose. Lemieux had problems just beating a 2nd tier fighter like Rios last night. If Golden Boy risks Lemieux by putting him in with fighters like Curtis Stevens or Tureano Johnson, there would be a very good chance that he would lose to both of them.