By Allan Fox: David Lemieux (36-3, 32 KOs) will be fighting his toughest match since his loss to Gennady Golovkin when he faces Curtis Stevens (29-5, 21 KOs) tonight at the Turning Stone Resort & Casino in Verona, New York. Lemieux has been playing is carefully with his career since he was knocked out by Triple G in 2015. Tonight’s Lemieux-Stevens fight will be televised on HBO Boxing After Dark.
Lemieux has a couple of wins under his belt since that fight, but neither of his opponents – Glen Tapia and Cristian Rios – is in the same class as Stevens. The shots that Stevens hits Lemieux with tonight are going to be a lot harder than anything he’s taken in quite some time. Lemieux crumbled when getting hit hard by Golovkin in their fight in October 2015. Lemieux seemed to take the head shots from Golovkin, but when he was getting hit to the body, he couldn’t handle it.
Stevens is a very good body puncher when he focuses on going downstairs. Mostly though, Stevens is a head hunter with his shots. Stevens’ game plan for tonight will very likely be for him to go to the body of Lemieux to see if he can expose this weak area. Lemieux seem to have problems when facing guys with punching power.
When Lemieux fought the heavy-handed Marco Antonio Rubio in 2011, he did well against him for the first 5 rounds of the contest. However, when Rubio started to hit Lemieux with his big punches in the 6th round, quickly broke him down and stopped him in the next round. Some boxing fans think Lemieux lost the fight because he had faded. It was more of a case of him not being able to handle the punching power or Rubio.
Lemieux wasn’t getting hit in the first 5 rounds because he was the one throwing all the punches. Rubio was just covering up and weathering the storm the best that he could. When Lemieux stopped throwing as many punches in round 6, Rubio took over the fight by letting his hands go and hurting Lemieux. Stevens probably isn’t going to wait nearly as long as Rubio did to crank start his offense. Stevens likely will be firing off his big body shots from round 1, making Lemieux defend against them or else get taken out quickly.
Lemieux is taken a major risk with his career in fighting the No.2 ranked WBC contender Stevens tonight. It’s risky but Lemieux stands to gain a lot if he can win the fight. He can get moved higher in the World Boxing Council’s rankings, and be in line to fight for the WBC 160lb title win the smoke clears from the Golovkin vs. Daniel Jacobs and Saul Canelo Alvarez fights.
The best possible outcome for Lemieux would arguably be for Canelo to beat Golovkin later on this year in September. Lemieux could then fight Canelo for the WBC title if he doesn’t vacate it once again. Canelo doesn’t seem all that interested in holding onto titles and defending them against the top contenders the way normal champions do. He seems more focused on picking fights, winning titles, and then giving up the titles to move on. It’s a strange situation.
With Stevens, 32, it’s impossible to know what you’re going to get from him tonight. He’s sometimes very good like he was in stopping Patrick Teixeira in 2 round in May of 2016, but then he turns around and puts in a poor performance in his last fight against James De La Rosa. Stevens is very unpredictable. He lost to Hassan N’Dam in 2014 by a 12 round decision, but in his previous fight against a very good Tureano Johnson, he beat him a 10 round decision.
I would favor Tureano over N’Dam any day of the week. Tureano is a very good pressure fighter. For Stevens to beat Tureano, it shows you how good of a fighter he is when he’s firing on all cylinders. I think Tureano would knockout Lemieux if given the chance to fight him. That would be a bad match-up for Lemieux to fight someone as skilled and powerful as Tureano Johnson. Stevens is a fast starter usually, as he showed in his quick knockouts of Elvin Ayala, Saul Roman, Piotr Wilczewski and Ray Smith in the past.
When Stevens comes out quickly, he’s capable ending his fights right away. He’s a lot like Daniel Jacobs the way he blasted out Peter Quillin in 1 round. Stevens explodes on his opponents, making it tough on them to defend his big power shots. Stevens has good boxing ability when he wants to use it, but he’s mainly a puncher. Stevens is one of the best fast start fighters in boxing right now.
The loser of tonight’s Lemieux-Stevens fight is going to need to hit the reset button their boxing career. It would be bad news for either of these guys if they get beaten, because they’ve already lost more than once. Having to come back from yet another loss would be time confusing for either of these guys, and I’m not sure if they can come back. The middleweight division has improved recently with Jermall Charlo moving up in weight, and we’re likely to see other talented junior middleweights moving up to 160 as well.
Lemieux and Stevens may soon be replaced by better fighters from the 154lb division. That’s why they’ve got to take advantage of their opportunity while they can to get a big money fight against Canelo or Golovkin. Those are the two top fighters at 160 right now. If the winner of tonight’s Lemieux vs. Stevens fight can get a title shot against the Canelo-Golovkin winner, they’d get a big payday out of the fight, especially if it’s on HBO PPV.
Prediction
My prediction is that Stevens will win the fight tonight by jumping on Lemieux and unloading on him with a flurry of combinations that puts the Canadian down for the count. Lemieux will try and come out landing his big left hook, but Stevens will get to him first with his own left hook to hurt him. Once Stevens has Lemieux hurt, he’ll finish him with a blizzard of power shots to the head and body. Lemieux won’t beat the count. I don’t think he will. If Lemieux does make it back to his feet, he’ll be too hurt to defend himself from Stevens’ storm of punches that he’s going to land. Lemieux is too slow, too predictable and too easy to hit for him to make it out of the first two rounds against Stevens. Lemieux is going to need to start much faster than he normally does tonight if he wants to avoid getting taken out immediately by Stevens, because he’s going to be getting hit by some big shots right from the start in this fight. Stevens obviously knows that his best chance of winning this fight is to go after Lemieux early rather than waiting until the midpoint of the fight. The problems with Stevens waiting until the 6th round to start up his offense are he’ll take too much punishment from Lemieux if he uses that tactic. Stevens is not going to be able to beat Lemieux if he’s punch drunk from eating big power shots for the first 5 rounds. Stevens doesn’t have the engine or the chin to take Lemieux’s big power shots for six rounds. He’s got to go after Lemieux right away if he wants to win this fight.