Golovkin will have to wait on Lemieux fight

By Boxing News - 06/23/2015 - Comments

lemieux678By Allan Fox: If WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) is seriously interested in fighting newly crowned IBF middleweight champ David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs), then he’s going to need to wait a while, possibly a long while, before he gets a crack at him.

The 26-year-old Lemieux has a mandatory defense coming up against possibly 41-year-old Sam Soliman that he needs to get out of the way before he can start thinking about unification matches against the other champions at 160. The other thing that will likely hold back the Golovkin-Lemieux fight from taking place is Lemieux’s promoters at Golden Boy.

They’ll very likely save Lemieux to match him against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez when/if he beats WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto this year. Even if Canelo loses the fight to Cotto, having Lemieux as Golden Boy’s ace in the hole will enable Canelo to go immediately into another world title fight against Lemieux rather than having to bide his time fighting junior middleweights in his special weight class of 155 pounds that Canelo likes to fight at.

As of now, Lemieux would likely be facing Soliman next, as he’s rated No.5. The guys that are ranked above him either have a fight scheduled or were beaten. However, Soliman has a fight scheduled this Friday, June 26th against unbeaten Dominic Wade, and it’s very possible that he’ll lose to Wade. In that case, it could be someone entirely different that Lemieux winds up facing. But it really doesn’t matter though in terms of speeding up the process for Lemieux to face Golovkin because that’s a fight that won’t happen soon.

Golden Boy obviously realizes the worth that they have in Lemieux, and the last thing they’re going to want to do is test him this soon by putting him in with a good fighter like Golovkin.

Lemieux looked good at times in beating Hassn N’Dam last Saturday, but he really struggled in the last four rounds of the fight. Lemieux proved pretty clearly that he’s an eight round fighter at best, and that he doesn’t have the skills to deal with guys with good boxing skills. If he’s not able to knock them out or drop them multiple times like he did against N’Dam, then he’s going to lose to them.

If you took away Lemieux’s four knockdowns against N’Dam, he would have lost the fight. Granted, N’Dam is a very good fighter with excellent boxing skills, but the fact of the matter is, Lemieux was getting out-boxed even in the rounds where he scored knockdowns. If a fighter like N’Dam was able to out-box Lemieux, the other middleweights will do it as well.

This is why it’s important that Golden Boy be careful in the guys that they match Lemieux up against until they can cash out with him in a fight against Canelo or Cotto. They need to put him in with a big star for him to get at least one big payday before he loses his IBF title.

No one really expects Lemieux to hold onto his IBF title for any length of time unless he’s matched very carefully by Golden Boy. That means he needs to be kept away from guys like Golovkin for as long as possible if not forever.



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