By Jeff Aranow: This Saturday night, middleweight contenders David Lemieux (36-3, 32 KOs) and Curtis Stevens (29-5, 21 KOs) will be fighting on HBO Boxing After Dark in a 12 round fight at the Turning Stone Resort & Casino in Verona, New York. This fight has knocked written all over it.
Lemieux is the favorite in the fight, but you can really call it a 50-50 fight because Stevens has the power and the fighting style to end this match early.
Stevens didn’t look good in his last fight against James De La Rosa last November. Stevens won a 10 round decision but he struggled after failing to knockout De La Rosa in the early rounds.
Lemieux didn’t look all that great in his last fight in beating Cristian Fabian Rios by a 10 round decision last October. However, Lemieux put in a better performance in that fight than Stevens did in beating De La Rosa. In Lemieux’s previous fight, he destroyed Glen Tapia in 4 rounds last May. Lemieux looked like a world beater in that fight.
The boxing experts believe that the 5’9 ½” Lemieux will use his 2-inch height advantage to get the better of the shorter 5’7” Stevens from the outside. However, Stevens has the reach advantage by 1 inch in the fight, and he’s likely to take the fight to the inside. Lemieux isn’t going to be able to keep Stevens on the outside with his lack of a jab and his flat-footed fighting style. If Lemeiux is going to win this fight, he’s going to need to beat Stevens at his own game on the inside. It’s going to be a left hook war on the inside for as long as it lasts. I won’t be surprised if the fight ends within 6 rounds with either guy getting knocked out.
Stevens, 32, is the older fighter by 4 years, but that’s not an advantage or a disadvantage for him. Stevens is still very much in the prime of his boxing career. Age isn’t going to be a factor in this fight either way.
The Lemieux vs. Stevens fight breaks down to these areas:
– Size: Lemieux will likely be the heavier fighter on Saturday by at least 10 pounds on Saturday night. However, the weight and his slight height advantage won’t likely be a factor in the fight.
– Speed: Stevens is the faster of the two. He throws his left hook with excellent speed, and it’s going to be difficult on Lemieux to track
– Experience: Stevens is the more experienced of the two. He’s been in the ring with the likes of Gennady Golovkin, Andre Dirrell, Hassan N’Dam, Tureano Johnson and Darnnell Boone. Lemieux has fought Golovkin, Marco Antonio Rubio, N’Dam and Joachim Alcine.
– Heart: The heart that Stevens showed in rallying to stop Tureano Johnson in their fight in 2010 tells me that he’s the more determined fighter of the two.
– Punch resistance: Stevens seems to have the better chin. Lemieux falls apart when he’s hit for any length of time. That’s the one problem with Lemieux. He crumbles when he meets stiff resistance in his fights. We saw that in his losses to Alcine and Rubio.
– Ring IQ: This is another area where Stevens has the advantage. When he suffered an injury in his last fight against James De La Rosa, he changed his game plan from slugging to boxing, and he ended up winning a 10 round decision.
– Defense: This is a toss-up area. Both guys are easy to hit. Stevens has better footwork of the two, however, and that enables him to limit how much he gets tagged by his opponents.
– Mobility: Stevens is the more mobile of the two. Lemieux is a straight ahead type of fighter, who doesn’t have good wheels. That’s one of the reasons why he’s lost to guys like Golovkin Alcine and Rubio.