By Allan Fox: Despite being the underdog for Saturday’s bout, #1 IBF Hassan N’Dam (31-1, 18 KOs) expects to totally dominate #4 IBF David Lemieux (33-2, 31 KOs) when the two of them fight for the vacant IBF middleweight title this Saturday on June 20th at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Canada.
Surprisingly, the 31-year-old N’Dam believes that he’ll be able to score a knockout in this fight. N’Dam hasn’t knocked anyone out in five years since stopping Omar Gabriel Weis in 2010.
Considering the long dry spell N’Dam has had in between knockouts, it’s not likely that he’ll be able to score a knockout against Lemieux. It’s not that Lemieux has a great chin and can’t be knocked. He’s been stopped before four years ago by the hard hitting Marco Antonio Rubio. But the problem is that N’Dam is not a big puncher, and for him to land enough shots to get Lemieux out of there, he’s going to need to stand in the pocket with him and trade shots. I don’t think that’s going to work out too well for N’Dam if he chooses to fight like that.
“I promise a world-class performance tomorrow night in Montreal against hometown favorite David Lemieux for the IBF middleweight world championship,” N’Dam said. “I will adapt to whatever style Lemieux brings.”
N’Dam is a very clever boxer, and quite capable of boxing circles around Lemieux at times. But it’s going to be very difficult for N’Dam to do this for the entire 12 round fight on Saturday. Sooner or later, Lemieux is going to catch up to N’Dam and lower the boom on him. N’Dam is the type of fighter who can survive against Lemieux if that’s his goal.
If N’Dam decides that he wants to go the full 12 rounds and not get knocked out, he can probably do that by moving the entire fight. But he’s not going to beat Lemieux fighting that way. This is Lemieux’s venue, and he’s going to be very hard to beat fighting at home in front of a large pro-Lemieux crowd in Montreal. If this was France, where N’Dam lives, he would have a good chance of winning a decision if he could move for 12 rounds.
N’Dam has yet to be beat when fighting in France, but he’s also never fought anyone good over there. N’Dam’s best wins have come against the likes of Max Bursk, Curtis Stevens, Fulgencio Zuniga, Giovanni Lorenzo, Omar Weiss and Autandil Khurtsidze. Those aren’t relevant fighters in the middleweight division.
N’Dam has never faced the likes of Tureano Johnson, Gennady Golovkin, Daniel Jacobs, Matt Korobov, Andy Lee, Billy Joe Saunders and Chris Eubanks Jr. Those are some of the best fighters in the middleweight division. The one time that N’Dam stepped up in class was against Peter Quillin in 2012, and he lost that fight by a 12 round decision after getting knocked down six times.
“I can KO him [Lemieux] in round one, or in any other round,” N’Dam said. “He has never fought anyone with my skill set. Lemieux is coming into the deep end and I will prove he doesn’t belong here. I will show his handlers that he doesn’t belong at the top tier of world-class boxing.”
To be sure, Lemieux is definitely stepping up in class for this fight, but he’s been there before in his fight against Rubio four years ago. The question now is whether or not Lemieux has improved since then, because he’s going to need to be a better fighter than he was in 2011 for him to beat a fighter in N’Dam’s class.
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