By Dan Ambrose: IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs) says he doesn’t care that people see him as the underdog in his unification fight against IBO/WBA middleweight champion Gennady “GGG” Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs) this Saturday night.

Lemieux, 26, says as far as he’s concerned, he’s not an underdog in this fight. He believes he’s going to beat the 33-year-old Golovkin and take his two titles back to Canada after the fight.

Lemieux says he’s had his best training camp ever and has broken training records all along the way. Lemieux feels that Golovkin is very beatable, and he’s the one to do it on Saturday at Madison Square Garden in New York.

Lemieux thinks that he and Golovkin are the two top middleweights in the division, and the winner of their fight will establish who the No.1 fighter is. That’s something that even Golovkin wouldn’t say though, because there are still a lot of unanswered questions about who the best in the 160lb division is.

All the Golovkin-Lemieux fight will do is establish who the better fighter is between the two of them. The winner will still need to face the winner of the Saul “Canelo” Alvarez vs. Miguel Cotto fight. After that, there would still be the winner of the Daniel Jacobs vs. Peter Quillin and Andy Lee vs. Billy Joe Saunders fights.

In an ideal world, we could see the Golovkin-Lemieux winner face the Cotto-Canelo winner, and then face the Jacobs-Quillin winner, and finally the winner of the Lee-Saunders fight. But in reality, we might not see all of those fights happening due to boxing politics and/or the champions themselves simply not wanting to risk their necks in the ring against the best.

“I’m ready for anything,” Lemieux said to IFL TV. “If the fight goes to two rounds as much as it goes twelve, I’m going to be ready for anything. But I know I’m living that dream with those four belts and with a lot of people being shocked in this outcome. We’re making history. I always knew that one day we’d face each other, because we’re the two top dogs, and there has to be just one guy on the top. This is what we’re here for, making sure who is the best,” Lemieux said.

Lemieux is very confident about this fight just as he was before his losses to Joachim Alcine and Marco Antonio Rubio. Before those two fights, Lemieux sounded like he was unbeatable, yet he still lost the fights. Now 10 fights later, Lemieux’s confidence has been pumped back up off the backs of a string of mostly little known middleweights, and now he’s just as confident as he was before the Rubio and Alcine fights. One can only hope that Lemieux has improved in the ring enough not to get knocked out again.

“When told that he’s an underdog in the fight, Lemieux said “I don’t pay attention to those things. We’re going to be in the ring, him versus me, and that’s all that’s important. I’m no underdog in my mind,” Lemieux said.

Lemieux can ignore him being the underdog and say that he’s not, but people are measured by others rather than by themselves. When you tell yourself that you’re the best despite having failed in the past, repeatedly, then that’s merely narcissism at play, and it can lead to nightmarish outcomes. Lemieux needs to reign in his ego and see things clearly for this fight otherwise he’s going to get beaten again.