Loeffler is glad Lemieux willing to face Golovkin

By Boxing News - 07/26/2015 - Comments

golovkin5623By Dan Ambrose: WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin’s promoter Tom Loeffler is extremely pleased that IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs) and his promoters at Golden Boy Promotions have elected to face him on October 17th on HBO pay-per-view.

Golovkin has been waiting for a big money fight against one of the top middleweights for the last three years since he started staging his fights in the United States. It took until now for one of the top fighters in the division to step up and face him. It’s sad that the top guys like Miguel Cotto, Saul “Canelo” Alvarez, Daniel Jacobs, Peter Quillin and Andy Lee hasn’t shown interest in facing him, but it kind of tells you what certain fighters are content with picking fights rather than facing the top guys.

“Finally we were able to get somebody to agree to fight Gennady, somebody that had something to risk,” Loeffler told The Associated Press. “Whenever there was a champion or somebody that had something to risk to fight Gennady, they would never get in the ring with him.”

Lemieux, 26, is cut from a different cloth. He’s not afraid to take risky fights, and he’s not someone that asks his opponents to fight him at catch-weights. And he likely will never ask his challengers to fight him at a catch-weight like we’re seeing with nowadays. Lemieux is willing to risk his IBF title in this unification fight for a chance to face Golovkin and prove that he can beat the fighter that is arguably the best at 160.

Lemieux has the kind of exciting fighting style that will make it interesting even if he loses. He’s someone that will gain something just by accepting the fight, and being willing to go out on his shield.

Lemieux will need to fight at a higher level than we saw recently in his fights against Hassan N’Dam and Gabriel Rosado. Lemieux was hit too often in those fights, and he can’t let Golovkin hit him with the kinds of shots he was getting by from those guys. Lemieux also gave away a lot of rounds against N’Dam late in the fight, and he cannot afford to do that with Golovkin because he doesn’t gas out. He still punches hard late in his fights.

“What changed my mind and everyone involved is that Lemieux can beat GGG, so why even waste our time with the mandatory? Let’s go straight to GGG,” Lemieux’s promoter Oscar De La Hoya said to ESPN.com. “He has a real shot at beating him. And this is the big fight he wanted, and when we presented this fight to him he was ecstatic. Lemieux is fired up. He says, ‘Nobody has ever pushed Golovkin back. He does not know how to fight going back.’ Lemieux has a beautiful jab, and he is going to use it.”

De La Hoya has said in the past that Golovkin doesn’t know how to fight going backwards. He believes that WBA welterweight champion Keith Thurman is the type of fighter who is really good at fighting going backwards. Thurman always throws his left hook while backing up. It’s predictable. If you look at one of Thurman’s fights, he’s always got the left hook ready for when he starts backing up. Given that Thurman hasn’t fought anyone that you can call a really good fighter, he’s been able to get away with being so predictable.

I haven’t seen Lemieux fight too much going backwards. He seems to be always going forwards like Golovkin, so I believe they’re both in the same boat as far as not having much experience in fighting in retreat. Hopefully, De La Hoya isn’t counting on Golovkin being backed up by Lemieux because if it doesn’t happen, Lemieux might be up the creek without a paddle on October 17th at Madison Square Garden in New York.



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