By Dan Ambrose: IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs) says he saw everything he needed to see when he stood and faced off with IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) when the two of them met at a recent press conference to publicize their October 17th fight on HBO pay-per-view from Madison Square Garden in New York.
The 26-year-Lemieux says he saw weakness in Golovkin’s eyes during their stare down, and he says going to attack that weakness when he gets inside the ring with the Kazakhstan fighter.
In fairness to Golovkin, he usually looks pretty meek during his stare downs with his opponents. He doesn’t try and scare his opponents like a lot of fighters do outside of the ring. Golovkin is one of those fighters who is able to compartmentalize aspects of his life.
When he’s not fighting, he’s not trying to scare anybody by giving them dirty looks. When he is fighting, he still doesn’t try and stare his opponents down. He treats more as a sport and less as a psychological combat the way Lemieux apparently does.
“I saw some things that I love and I will use during the fight,” Lemieux said via Le Journal de Montreal. “When you meet an opponent’s eyes, the eyes do not lie. I saw what I wanted to know. I noted weaknesses in him and I think I now have a small advantage psychologically.”
If Lemieux is banking on Golovkin running away and cowering in fear of him on October 17th, then he’s going to be in for a rude awakening. Golovkin is obviously going to be out there looking to take Lemieux’s head off in this fight, and he’s not going to be all mixed up in childish psych out games that some fighters play by trying to get an edge through intimidation. Some fighters need this kind of thing to help them win.
Obviously they don’t feel that they can just win through being the better fighter, so they’re trying to scare their opponent ahead of time rather than just trying their own skills that they can get the job done. Lemieux seems to be one of those fighters who tries to scare his opponents by staring them down without blinking.
Lemieux should honestly forget about those kinds of games for this fight, because it’s not going to work. Whatever he saw in Golovkin’s eyes during the stare down is meaningless. Golovkin could have been thinking any number of things during the stare down, and probably not what Lemieux thinks.
In looking at some of the mismatches that Lemieux has had in the last four years since he was whipped by Marco Antonio Rubio and Joachim Alcine, Lemieux often stared down his over-matched opponents and he looked like he was always trying to get a psychological edge against them. As bad as Lemieux’s opposition has been in the last four years, he didn’t need to resort to giving his opponents menacing looks to induce fear in them.
Those guys were beaten the moment the contracts were signed for the fight. Lemieux could have kept his eyes closed during the stare downs with these fighters, and still gone out there and beaten them badly. But it’s different now that Lemieux is in there with the real thing and not fighting a weak fodder level opponent like he’s been consistently facing since 2011.
“It will be a lion against another lion,” Lemieux said. “I have all the tools necessary to fight with Golovkin and defeat him in a duel that will make history. I think I will be even better than my last two performances. I have things to prove to myself.”
Lemieux is one of those types of fighters who appear to have no self-doubt whatsoever. He’s too confident for his own good in this case. When you have that much confidence going for you, you make mistakes by assuming that you’re much better than your opponent and that can lead to you getting hurt in the ring.
Lemieux needs to come back down to earth and realize that he’s the underdog in this fight for a reason. Golovkin is simply a better fighter than him. Lemieux can try and stare Golovkin down all he wants to spot some kind of weakness that may help him sleep better at night, but I don’t think it’s good thing for Lemieux.
If he’s going to go off on the wrong direction by seeing things that aren’t there, then he should avoid looking at Golovkin in his eyes period. Lemieux be better off if he respects Golovkin’s ability rather than going into the ring with some crazy notions that he gathered from looking the Kazakhstan fighter in the eyes.
Lemieux really needs to work on his defense and his stamina for this fight. Lemieux is too easy to hit, and his stamina is horrible. Lemieux weighed in at 175.4 pounds at the 30-day weigh-in last week. This suggests that Lemieux is likely going to need to cut 15 pounds of weight the week of the fight unless he can burn off some more fat from his frame.
I doubt that he’ll do that. Cutting 15 pounds of water weight and is going to likely leave Lemieux weakened in the second half of the fight, which is when he usually fades. Lemieux ran out of gas in the second half of his fight against Hassan N’Dam last June, and found himself losing almost all of the last six rounds.
Lemieux’s stamina problems obviously aren’t lost on Golovkin and his trainer Abel Sanchez. They know what they have in Lemieux, and they’re going to be looking to exploit his stamina issues by pushing a fast pace in the early rounds of the contest.
Golovkin and Sanchez are going to drag Lemieux into the deep end and drown him in the later rounds of the fight when he loses the steam on his punches.
Lemieux’s best chance of winning this fight is to jump on Golovkin early in the first three rounds and hope that he can hurt him with something.
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