By Jim Dower: Middleweight contender Sebastien Demers (27-2, 10 KOs) stopped Martin Berthiaume (14-4-2, 8 KOs) in the 5th round on Saturday night at the Montreal Casino, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Demers, 29, making his 2nd fight since suffering a disappointing 10-round decision loss to Dionisio Miranda in August 2008, had little problems with the experienced Berthiaume, hammering him with uppercuts and hooks in every round until Berthiaume quit on his stool following the 5th round.
Demers controlled the fight with his jab and right hand in the 1st round, staying on top of Berthiaume and landing well with power shots to the head. Like in his previous losses to Miranda and Arthur Abraham, Demers showed the same poor defense as he usually does. Berthiaume was able to take advantage of Demer’s leaky defense by landing some nice right hands in the round. Though not a big puncher, Berthiaume was still able to land some big shots against Demers, who seemed more focused on trying to get his shots off and wasn’t thinking about defense.
In the 2nd and 3rd rounds, Demers stayed in close, landing with some nice hooks and uppercuts. When Demers is throwing punches, he looks quite good and shows a remarkable punch variety. His problem is that he’s not a particularly big puncher nor does he have a good defense. This is why he was taken out so quickly by Abraham in their fight in 2007, in which Demers was blasted out in three quick rounds. Berthiaume made the mistake of going to the ropes in the 3rd and took a lot of heavy shots from Demers.
In the 4th and 5th, Demers kept Berthiaume pinned to the ropes for much of both rounds hammering him with big uppercuts and hooks to the head. Berthiaume was still firing back but much less so than before. After the round ended, Berthiaume decided he had had enough and decided not to come out for the 6th.
It’s a good thing too, because he took some brutal right hands in the 5th and if the fight had continued for another round he would have taken much worse punishment and likely knocked out.
In other action on the card, undefeated middleweight knockout artist David Lemieux (14-0, 14 KOs) kept his perfect knockout record intact with a 1st round knockout of Mexican Luis Roberto Reyes (6-7-1, 5 KOs). Lemieux, only 20-years-old, dropped Reyes down three times in the 1st round. After the last knockdown, a hard left-right, the fight was stopped at 2:34 by referee Gerry Bolen.
Lemieux knocked Reyes down seconds into the fight with a hard left hook to the head while Reyes was backed into the corner. Reyes got up at the count of eight and continued fighting. He tried fending Lemieux off with jabs.
It didn’t work, as Lemieux backed him up with two rights to the body and then knocked him down for the second time with a right hook to the head. Again, Reyes got up at the count of six. Lemieux then wasted no time in knocking him down again, landing a right hand to the head. The fight was then stopped by referee Gerry Bolen.
Rounding out the card, the hard-punching middleweight Walid Smichet (20-5-3, 14 KOs) defeated Joshua Snyder (8-4-1, 3 KOs) by an eight-round unanimous decision. The final judges’ scores were 78-71, 77-71 and 77-71. Smichet, 29, knocked Snyder down five times in the fight, twice in the 1st and 2nd rounds each and a final time in the 8th round.
However, after dominating the first three rounds, Smichet tired out and lost rounds four through seven as he was outworked. Still, because of his dominating in the first three rounds, Smichet still held a substantial lead going into the 8th.
Snyder appeared to be on his way to winning the 8th round as well, but made the mistake of standing directly in front of Smichet while fighting him against the ropes. This allowed Smichet to land two huge right hands to the jaw with the second one knocking Snyder to the canvas for the 5th time in the fight. After Snyder got to his feet, the round ended.