By Scott Gilfoid: #8 IBF, #12 WBO, #15 WBC, middleweight contender David Lemieux (31-2, 29 KO’s) is getting bumped up a level in his competition by being matched up against former middleweight world title challenger Fernando Guerrero (26-2, 19 KO’s) in a scheduled 10 round bout on May 24th on the undercard of the Adonis Stevenson vs. Andrzej Fonfara headliner bout at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada.
Lemieux, 25, suffered a couple of losses three years ago to Marco Antonio Rubio and Joachim Alcine when he attempted to step it up from the weak opposition that he’d been feasting on up until then. Following that loss, Lemieux’s management put him back on the diet of weak opposition, and not surprisingly he’s looking good again.
By matching Lemieux against the 27-year-old Guerrero they’re taking a tiny step forward with him to see if he can handle it against a 2nd tier middleweight rather than putting him in with a contender and possibly watching him get knocked out again. Guerrero is someone who has decent offensive skills, but who has had problems when facing punchers with any kind of power.
40-year-old Grady Brewer was the first to stop Guerrero back in 2011 when he stopped him in 4 rounds. Last year, WBO middleweight champion Peter Quillin was the next guy to stop Guerrero when he stopped him in 7 rounds.
Lemieux is a pretty limited fighter with excellent power, but poor stamina and marginal boxing skills. If Guerrero is able to keep out of the way of his punching on the inside, then he should beat him without any problems. Lemieux doesn’t have much of an outside game, and he’s only good if he can crowd one of his fighters. If Guerrero can stay on the move and use his jab, he could get him into the deep end of the fight and then drown him the way that Rubio and Alcine did.
Lemieux looked terrible in his last fight against little known fighter Jose Miguel Torres last November. Lemieux got a 7th round stoppage, but he was hurt at point point in the fight by this guy. This should have been an easy fight for Lemieux, but it turned out to be a difficult one.
Also on the card are the following fights:
Adonis Stevenson vs. Andrzej Fonfara
Mikael Zewski vs. Prince Doku Jr
Julian Williams vs. Michael Medina
Jermell Charlo vs. Charlie Ota
Eleider Alvarez vs. Radivoje Kalajdzic
Artur Beterbiev vs. Jeff Lacy
Oscar Rivas vs. TBA
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