By Jim Dower: Unbeaten middleweight contender David Lemieux (25-0, 24 KO’s) scored a 2nd round knockout of 37-year-old Purnell Gates (18-2, 13 KO’s) on Friday night at the Bell Centre, Montreal, Quebec, Canada. The fight was similar in some ways to the David Haye vs. Audley Harrison bout that took place last month, because Gates looked reluctant to fight from the very start of the bout.

After chasing Gates for the entire first round trying to get him to engage, Lemieux finally caught up to Gates in the 2nd round and dropped him with a left to the midsection followed by a right to the head. Gates went to a knee and then resumed fighting. However, moments later Gates went down to a knee without getting hit while backed up against the ropes. He complained of having injured his right hand. The fight, if you want to call that, was then stopped by referee Jean-Guy Brousseau at 2:50 of the 2nd.

Lemieux stalked and at times chased Gates around the ring in the 1st round, missing often with attempted shots due to Gates’ constant lateral movement. Gates looked a lot like Andre Dirrell in his fight with Carl Froch. He just didn’t seem to want to fight. Gates was able to land a few weak jabs and right hands during the opening round. However, after landing a glancing right hand late in the round, Gates turned around and bend over holding his right hand to signal that he had hurt it. The action was resumed and he spent the remainder of the round running like before.

The crowd booed the action in the 2nd round, as Gates opted to run even more than in the previous round. Lemieux missed with a number of big shots and looked visibly frustrated with Gates. Finally, Lemieux caught up with Gates and put him down with a combination. Unfortunately, seconds later Gates went down without getting hit and the fight was then stopped.

After the bout, Lemieux’s trainer was upset with the performance of Gate and was quite animated in the corner. For Lemieux, this was his 21st knockout within two rounds or less of his 24 knockouts on his record. It’s a clear sign that he needs to face better opposition because this was a useless fight for him because he wasn’t facing an opponent that was throwing anything back at him.

In other action on the card, Renan St Juste (22-2-1, 15 KO’s) stopped Sebastien Demers (31-4, 11 KO’s) in the 2nd round to win the vacant WBO NABO super middleweight title. Demers, 30, looked timid from the start of the fight and did a lot of moving. In the 2nd round, Demers landed a nice right hand to the head of St Juste. However, St Juste fired back with two hard left hands that knocked Demers out, sending him down back first on the canvas. Referee Marlon Wright stopped the fight at 0:54 of the 2nd. There was a brief bit of confusion, as Wright turned around and motioned for St Juste to go to the neutral corner after the knockdown and it reminded me a lot of a similar move made by Wright in the Lucian Bute vs. Librado Andrade fight in 2008 in which Wright turned his back on Bute after he had been knocked down and focused on giving instructions to Andrade to go to the neutral corner.

Demers did nothing in the 1st round, and looked very cautious of getting hit by St Juste. Late in the round, St Juste caught Demers up against the ropes and landed a flurry of shots that had Demers hurt and holding on. Demers was able to survive the round, but he looked nothing like the same fighter he once was three years ago before his knockout loss to Arthur Abraham in 2007.

Other fights on the card:

Arash Usmanee UD 10 Pedro Navarrete
Tyler Asselstine KO 1 Dave McQuaker