By Tim Fletcher: IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin (34-0, 31 KOs) added the IBF 160lb title to his growing collection of middleweight titles last Saturday night in defeating IBF champ David Lemieux (34-3, 31 KOs) by an 8th round knockout on HBO PPV from Madison Square Garden in New York.
Lemieux, 26, came into the fight with the reputation of being perhaps the hardest puncher in the 160lb division. However, after facing the Canadian Lemieux and taking his best shots, Golovkin and his trainer Abel Sanchez have both concluded that former Golovkin victim Curtis Stevens was the hardest puncher they’ faced, and has better power than Lemieux.
Indeed, Golovkin showed no fear of Lemieux’s punching power after the first few rounds. Once Golovkin had taken Lemieux’s best shots without suffering any damage, he then plowed ahead and began to really punish the cocky Canadian fighter.
When the one-sided slaughter was eventually stopped in the 8th round by referee Steve Willis at 1:32 of the round, Golovkin looked really disappointed. The look on Golovkin’s face was that of a fighter who wanted to finish the job with the wounded Lemieux.
Golovkin had Lemieux against the ropes in the 8th and was pummeling him with body and head shots. Lemieux was bending forward from the pain of Golovkin’s body shots, and it was only a matter of time before he was put out of his misery.
“The kind of fighter David is, as he showed on tapes, we knew he could box him and be effective,” Sanchez said to Fighthub. “Gennady finally showed that he’s got some boxing skills. The other ones had been easier. This one posed a kid of mental threat to him that this guy could do something, but after the first round the jab was so effective that it was difficult for David to do anything. He [Golovkin] winked at me and told me ‘Coach, I got this.’ It’s fun to have a guy that goes out there so cerebral. That goes out there and figures out what the other guy is doing. In the first round, David didn’t come out like I thought he was going to come out. If David had come out hard maybe it would have been a different story. Maybe Gennady doesn’t figure him out so early. I said before the fight that Curtis Stevens was the biggest puncher we had faced to date, and this guy [Lemieux] wasn’t a bigger puncher. What this guy was; he had a belt. He was the IBF champion, so automatically it makes you better. Better technically, better physically,” Sanchez said.
Lemieux looked really primitive in the ring last night, and nowhere near as talented as Golovkin. What was really strange about Lemieux’s game last night was the fact that he didn’t come out fast looking to attack Golovkin like many boxing fans had thought he would. Lemieux played it safe and stayed on the outside so he wouldn’t get hit by Golovkin’s power shots.
When Lemieux did come forward, he would throw a wild left hook, miss badly and then back off. What Lemieux needed to do was to charge forward so that he was in punching range of Golovkin so that he could land something. It was a mistake on Lemieux’s part not to fight as aggressively as he needed to because his fight strategy last night was a mistake.
“So I knew that because of that, he would pose those kinds of threats. Gennady said he wasn’t a bigger puncher than Curtis [Stevens],” Sanchez said. “What he was, was a strong kid, but limited in skills. As we said before, the IQ was different. It was a different class. He [Golovkin] hit him with a good body shot in the 8th, and [referee] Steve [Willis] had seen enough because his [Lemieux] face showed he didn’t want no more. Once he hurt him, you could see David’s face grimace. When a doctor steps foot on the ring apron, they believe there’s a problem and maybe they should stop it. Did David have a chance of winning? Absolutely not! Did David have a chance of success doing anything? Absolutely not! So why allow him to continue to take punishment like that? He’s a young kid. He’s going to have a great career, but this time he just fought a superior fighter.”
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