Lemieux: I know the adjustments to beat GGG

By Boxing News - 05/04/2017 - Comments

Image: Lemieux: I know the adjustments to beat GGG

By Jim Dower: David Lemieux (37-3, 33 KOs) will be back inside the ring this Saturday night against Marcos Reyes (35-4, 26 KOs), but the targets he has in the near future are Gennady “GGG” Golovkin and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez. Lemieux will be fighting Reyes, 29, on the undercard of Canelo’s fight against Julio Cesar Chavez Jr. at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada. The fight will be televised on HBO PPV.
Lemieux says he’s ready for both of them when the time comes.

Lemieux wants to avenge his loss to Golovkin from 2 years ago, and he feels he now knows how to beat him with the “adjustments” that he’s capable of making. The 28-year-old Lemieux isn’t saying was he learned the adjustments to defeat GGG. He just knows what needs to be done to send the Kazakhstan fighter down to defeat. Lemieux might not get a chance to face Golovkin anytime soon, however, because his co-promoters at Golden Boy Promotions might have something else in mind for him against Canelo Alvarez in September or next year.

There’s also talk of Lemieux possibly fighting WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders for his title, but that fight will require the World Boxing Organization to let Saunders take another voluntary defense. He’s scheduled to fight #1 WBO Avantandil Khurtsidze on June 8 in London, England. After that fight, Saunders is supposed to be fighting another mandatory challenger for the WBO.

“I definitely want to fight the best,” said Lemieux to esnewsreporting.com. “When the time comes for me for me to fight Canelo, my arms are wide open. I’m not going to say no to nobody. I can see myself beating these guys, and they’re going to fear me, and not me fear them.”

The time for Lemieux to fight Canelo could happen as early as September if Golden Boy promotions feel like Canelo needs another tune-up to get ready for Triple G. It would be Canelo’s fourth straight tune-up if he opts to fight Lemieux instead of Golovkin.

“Chavez is a great fighter,” said Lemieux. “He has a different style from Canelo. He’s a good boy. He’s strong and a good fighter. There’s a lot of things for him to prove in this fight also. So there’s going to be that extra amount of strength.”

Chavez Jr. hasn’t proven himself to be a good fighter in the last five years since his loss to Sergio Martinez in 2012. Chavez Jr. is a big fighter with good power, but he has defensive issues and he lacks hand speed. Those flaws could be exposed by Canelo on Saturday. Lemieux would be a better option for Canelo than Chavez Jr.

“Definitely,” said Lemieux when asked if he wants to fight Golovkin again in the future. “Why, because I know the adjustments to be made to beat a guy like that. He’s a human being. He’s a good fighter, but he’s a human being. Everybody has weaknesses. Everybody has strengths. I know my strengths going into a fight against a guy like Triple G. I’m never underestimating or downgrading him. He’s a great fighter. He’ll never be an easy fight, but he’s beatable. I think the fans would love that in the near future. It’ll prove to me that I can beat the best. I can do great things. I was ready to beat him. It’s about adjustments that have to be made. Now I know which adjustments that have to be made against a guy like that,” said Lemieux.

The only adjustments that Lemieux needed to make in the Golovkin fight were to let his hands go. Lemieux looked petrified the entire fight, refusing to attack Golovkin the way he needed to for him to have a chance to win.

Lemieux was dominated pretty badly by Golovkin in 2015. Golovkin stopped Lemieux in 8 rounds, and it wasn’t much of a fight at all. Lemieux couldn’t get past Golovkin’s jab in that fight. For some strange reason, Lemieux chose not to go after him the way he had done with his other opponents to try and knock him out.

Lemieux looked scared and badly intimidated by Golovkin. You can say that welterweight Kell Brook did a better job against Golovkin than Lemieux did, and he had less size and punching power going for him. Brook was more willing to test his chin against Golovkin initially. Brook stopped taking any real risks in the 3rd round after he got clipped by a big right hand to the head. It’s not up to Lemieux when or if to fight Golovkin again.

Lemieux’s promoters at Golden Boy and Eye of the Tiger Promotions are the ones that are calling the shots with whom he faces, and it appears that they’re building him up to match him against Canelo in what you can refer to as an in house fight. However, Lance Pugmire mentioned a possible fight between Lemieux and Billy Joe Saunders. I don’t know if that’s a doable one or not. It would be up to the WBO to decide whether they’re going to change their mind on making Saunders fight back to back mandatory challengers like they had previously directed him to do.

If Lemieux gets the Saunders fight this year, it would put Golovkin in situation where he could be looking bad if Canelo decides not to fight him in September. Golovkin wanted to fight Saunders so that he could win the final world title at middleweight not in his possession. Saunders has the WBO belt, which Golovkin needs to capture the final piece of the middleweight puzzle.

Lemieux needs to keep his focus on Marcos Reyes for Saturday, because he’s got some punching power. Reyes gave Chavez Jr. problems in their fight in 2015. Reyes lost the fight by a 10 round unanimous decision, but it was a fairly close match-up. Reyes was landing some nice punches, but he didn’t have the size or the power to trouble Chavez Jr. Reyes lost recently to Elvin Ayala last November in getting beaten by a 7th round knockout.