By Dan Ambrose: David Lemieux (33-2, 31 KOs) is a heavy favorite going into his fight this Saturday night against #1 IBF Hassan N’Dam (31-1, 18 KOs) in their clash for the vacant IBF middleweight title at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada.
A win here for the 26-year-old Lemieux will not only give him the IBF 160lb title, but it will also give him a shot at fighting the winner of the Miguel Cotto vs. Saul “Canelo” Alvarez fight. While Gennady Golovkin has been mentioned as the likely guy that the winner of the Cotto-Canelo fight will be facing, it’s likely not going to happen that way if Canelo is the one that emerges the winner of that fight.
Golden Boy Promotions promotes both Canelo and Lemieux, and they’re likely to ignore Golovkin in favor of Lemieux for Canelo. Golden Boy Promotions President Oscar De La Hoya said recently that he wants to let the Canelo-Golovkin fight marinate for a couple of years before he makes that fight.
10th rd TKO for @lemieuxboxing in his last fight in Dec v Gabe Rosado! What's ur prediction for #LemieuxNDam June 20? pic.twitter.com/bn1zB2abWz
— GoldenBoyPromotions (@GoldenBoyBoxing) June 8, 2015
Of course, Canelo is going to have to be content with facing lesser fighters than Golovkin in the meantime, but it looks like De La Hoya isn’t too worried about that. Understandably, De La Hoya wants to keep the 24-year-old Canelo winning while the 33-year-ld Golovkin ages.
“If you blink, you might miss it,” Lemieux said about the N’Dam fight via ESPN.com. “It’s going to be a great night and very explosive. I’m actually very excited and very happy to be fighting Hassan N’Dam.”
N’Dam isn’t a big puncher, so if there is going to be a quick knockout in this fight, it’s going to be Lemieux being the one getting the KO. N’Dam’s only chance is to try and out-box Lemieux and get him into the deeper end of the fight to maybe get a knockout. We saw that done with Marco Antonio Rubio, who played rope-a-dope on the younger Lemieux four years ago in taking tremendous punishment in the first five rounds of the fight before coming on in the 6th round to batter the exhausted Lemieux until stopping him in the 7th round. Joachim Alcine defeated Lemieux by a controversial 12 round decision in 2011 in a fight that could have gone Lemieux’s way due to him dominating Alcine for much of the fight.
“I’m going to hurt them regardless if it is an undefeated [titleholder] who has never been knocked down or some guy who has been knocked down,” Lemieux said. “To me, it makes no difference because I have one goal in my mind. It’s to destroy and to be able to do it the best way I can throughout the whole fight.”
There’s some big money fights for Lemieux if he can find a way to win against N’Dam on Saturday. He’s got to make sure he gets N’Dam out of there quickly because if he’s able to get his confidence up and win some of the early rounds, then it’s quite possible we’ll see N’Dam box his way to a decision.
Lemieux’s punching power will be a huge asset in this fight though, because N’Dam was knocked down six times previously in a fight against Peter Quillin in 2012. Quillin doesn’t have the same kind of punching power that Lemieux does, and he’s not nearly as aggressive. Unless N’Dam flat out runs from Lemieux on Saturday, we’re likely to see a quick knockout with Lemieux stopping the France based fighter.
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