By Jason Kim: Undefeated middleweight prospect David Lemieux (17-0, 17 KO’s) kept his perfect knockout record intact with a 5th round stoppage over Bladimir Hernandez (18-3, 16 KO’s) on Friday night at the Montreal Casino, in Montreal, Canada,. Lemieux, 20, a long term project with a great deal of power in both hands but kind of small at 5’10”, dropped the 23-year-old Hernandez twice in the fight, once at the end of the 3rd and another time in the 5th.
The bout was stopped after Lemieux knocked Hernandez down for the 2nd time in the fight from a big right hand in the 5th. The bout was stopped by referee Gerry Bolen. It was an uneven performance from Lemieux, who despite showing a lot of power at times, he showed poor defensive skills as he was nailed often by big shots from Hernandez.
The Lemieux started off the fight doing really well, loading up with big shots that he landed both to the head and body of Hernandez. Not exactly the tallest of middleweights, Lemieux was still able to get a lot of power and leverage into his shots when he wanted to load up with a big punch.
The way that Lemieux was sitting down on his punches, it looked as if the fight wouldn’t go beyond the 1st round. However, although Lemieux was able to put a lot of steam into his shots from time to time, most of his other shots were thrown with average power and were easily handled by Hernandez.
At the same time, it became apparent that Lemieux didn’t like to get hit in return from Hernandez, who had pretty good power of his own as it turns out. After tasting some of Hernandez’s big right hands in the opening round, Lemieux began to back off some and give Hernandez some space.
In the 2nd round, Hernandez made Lemieux pay for almost every punch that he would throw by countering him with big right hands. It was a simple matter for Hernandez, as all he had to do was wait for Lemieux to load up with one of his huge shots and then fire off a punch while Lemieux was out of position.
This happened again and again in the 2nd round, and you could see that Lemieux could dish it out but he wasn’t so keen out getting hit in return. Luckily for Lemieux, Hernandez’s power wasn’t huge because I could see Lemieux easily getting taken out had he been fighting some a little bit better than Hernandez.
In the 3rd round, Hernandez landed some big right hands late in the round, landing four big right hands one after another in the final minute of action. Lemieux paid Hernandez back by hitting him with a hard left-right combination followed by a big chopping right hand that knocked Hernandez down at the bell to end the 3rd round. Hernandez showed no ill effects from the knockdown in the 4th as he tore into Lemieux in the opening minute of the round taking advantage of Lemieux’s poor defense to land some big right hands.
Lemieux came back from this and more or less controlled the remainder of the round landing an occasional big shot. In the 5th round, Hernandez got the attention of Lemieux by pasting him with some huge right hands late in the round. Not to be outdone, Lemieux answered back with a nice right hand that put Hernandez down. He was then counted out by referee Gerry Bolen.
Lemieux is a kind of a weird case. He has lot of power in both hands, but he’s not very big for a middleweight and isn’t able to land with a lot of power all the time like Kelly Pavlik. He’s still young at 20, but I just can’t see Lemieux becoming a more than just a good regional fighter. He just doesn’t seem comfortable taking shots and he’s still facing 3rd tier opposition at this point in his career.