Is Lemieux being saved for Canelo by Golden Boy?

By Boxing News - 07/04/2015 - Comments

lemieux665By Dan Ambrose: After David Lemieux’s recent 12 round decision win over Hassan N’Dam (31-2, 18 KOs) to capture the vacant IBF middleweight title on June 20th last month, Golden Boy Promotions president Oscar De La Hoya ruled out any chance of Lemieux immediately fighting WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) in a unification fight.

De La Hoya’s reasoning for dismissing the fight was because Lemieux had a mandatory defense due for his newly won IBF title. In other words, the IBF wouldn’t allow Lemieux to face Golovkin even if he wanted to.

Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler then checked in with the IBF and found out that the IBF has no issue with the Golovkin-Lemieux unification fight going ahead first, and then Lemieux, or whoever had the belt afterwards, would defend the IBF title against the mandatory challenger.

Instead of taking the fight against Golovkin though, De La Hoya is still saying that Lemieux will fight the winner of the IBF eliminator bout. In this case it’ll be Tureano Johnson vs. Eamonn O’Kane. The winner of that fight will then face Lemieux by the end of the year.

While De La Hoya has talked about wanting to match Lemieux against Golokvin in what he feels would be an exciting fight, some boxing fans feel that what De La Hoya is really interested in is saving Lemieux long enough to match him against Golden Boy Promotions fighter Saul “Canelo” Alvarez after he finishes up with his November fight against WBC middleweight champion Miguel Cotto.

So whether Canelo loses or wins the Cotto fight, he’d have Lemieux waiting for his next fight. It works out both ways for Canelo. Let’s say he gets blasted apart by Cotto next November, Canelo can then pick up the pieces of his shattered career by immediately facing Lemieux for a shot at his IBF middleweight title. Yeah, Canelo would be coming off of a loss to Cotto, but I doubt the IBF would mind too much in letting the Lemieux vs. Canelo fight take place.

You would have to assume that Canelo would push for a catch-weight handicap, even thought is makes absolutely no sense for a 175lb fighter asking for a catch-weight at middleweight, which has an upper limit of 160lbs. But a catch-weight might weaken Lemieux, who is a solid middleweight, and likely won’t handle the loss of weight as well as Canelo.

There’s a possibility that Golovkin won’t get a chance at the IBF title until well after Canelo faces Lemieux for the belt. Even then, if Canelo beats Lemieux for the IBF title, I see Canelo ignoring a fight against Golovkin, and instead either vacating the belt or milking it against the mostly weak contenders the IBF has ranked. Other than Tureano Johnson, the IBF has a lot of weaker middleweights that Canelo could easily beat to hold onto the title for a couple of years without much effort. It would be like how WBO super middleweight champion Arthur Abraham had been able to hold onto his WBO 168lb title by fighting guys like Nikola Sjekloca and Paul Smith instead of the tougher guys that could potentially beat him.



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