Lemieux: I can’t wait to destroy the peasant [Saunders]

By Jeff Aranow: David Lemieux (38-3, 33 KOs) is now referring to Billy Joe Saunders (25-0, 12 KOs) as a “peasant,” and he says he can’t wait to “destroy” him in less than 2 weeks on December 16 on HBO. Lemieux is taking things a little bit further than calling the 28-year-old Saunders a peasant. Lemieux posted a warning to Saunders, telling him that he’s a “dead man.”

”Two weeks away fight fans 👍 can’t wait to show you guys how I will destroy this peasant. Billy Joe Saunders, you’re a dead man,” said Lemieux on his social media site.

Saunders replied with this response:

”Very unprofessional when your team had a death on their show few weeks ago, but I will put you in your place #Frog,” said Saunders.

Lemieux is going to be swinging for the fences on December 16 looking to knockout Saunders with every punch. If Saunders only had to worry about moving his head to elude Lemieux’s big shots, he’d stand a reasonably good chance of not getting knocked out in the fight. But Lemieux is a great body puncher, and perhaps even more dangerous than Gennady Golovkin. Lemieux doesn’t place his punches as well as Golovkin, but he appears to have more power with each punch he throws.

Saunders will be defending his World Boxing Organization 160 lb. title for the third time when he faces Lemieux on December 16 at the Place Bell in Laval, in Quebec, Canada. Saunders arguably lost his first defense of his WBO title last December against fringe contender Artur Akavov. It wasn’t that Akavov was more talented than Saunders. It was more of a case of the Russian fighter gutting out what appeared to be a win by outworking him, and doing a lot more. Saunders looked out of shape for the Akavov fight. The fight took place in Paisley, Scotland in the UK. Saunders was quite lucky to have won the fight. In Saunders’ second title defense, he beat Willie Monroe Jr. by a decisive 12 round unanimous decision on September 16 of this year. That was a definite win on Saunders’ part. He still didn’t look good, but he at least showed that he was the better fighter of the two.

Saunders is counting on his boxing skills to be enough for him to negate the punching power advantage Lemieux will bring to the ring on December 16. It’s going to be a lot of challenging work for Saunders to win a decision over Lemieux, because he’s going to be getting hit with hard shots. If the judges score the fight on which of the two fighters land the harder and cleaner landing punches, then it’s going to be Lemieux winning the fight easily. Saunders will have to outland Lemieux by a considerable margin for him to have a chance of winning by a decision. That’s if it goes the full 12 rounds.

Lemieux has been punishing his opponents recently. He’s knocked out 2 of his last 4 opponents in stopping Curtis Stevens and Glen Tapia. The two fighters that were the distance with Lemieux were very tough fighters in Marcos Reyes and Cristian Fabian Rios. Those guys took a ton of punishment from Lemieux to make it to the final bell.