Photo by Marilyn Paulino/RBRBoxing
There’s just something about a puncher, isn’t there? We can admire the brilliance of a defensive wizard, or the mastery of an aged technician. But sometimes, we just want to see somebody get wrecked. David Lemieux is one hell of a wrecker. The 26-year-old Canadian knockout artist boasts a record of 33-2, with 31 of those wins coming inside the distance. He had a fantastic 2014, first pounding the daylights out of Fernando Guerrero in Montreal before ending the year by heading to Brooklyn and destroying Gabe Rosado.
With Gennady Golovkin’s shadow cast ominously over the Middleweight division, Lemieux will take on Hassan N’Dam this Saturday night on Fox Sports 2. N’Dam is a solid fighter whose only loss came to Peter Quillin in 2012. Since then he’s rattled off four straight wins, albeit against less-than-stellar competition. He’s certainly going to be the boxer in this situation, because he’s rangy and, well, because Lemieux hits like a fucking dump truck.
It was that power that made him a staple on ESPN’s Friday Night Fights, where he rolled until running into a wall he couldn’t take down in Marco Antonio Rubio back in 2011. Even then, it seemed like more of a conditioning issue that held him back than anything else. Since his other setback, a decision loss to Joachim Alcine directly after the Rubio fight, he’s defeated eight straight opponents, mostly in Montreal, and mostly by violent knockout.
But he was certainly flying under the radar for the past few years, and it was only until the Guerrero fight, (on the undercard of an Adonis Stevenson bout) that we were able to get another high-profile glimpse of him. He made the most of it. Some pundits gave Guerrero a decent shot at a win, but he was thoroughly overmatched from the opening bell, and then he was beaten into the canvas. Finally, after climbing back up from that horrific year he had in 2011, Lemieux seems poised for superstardom.
Combining a muscular physique with perfectly coiffed hair, he certainly looks the part. It also helps that he can punch through cement with either fist. And it really, really helps that there are a couple of other bad ass motherfuckers in the division. We’ve already mentioned the Boogeyman himself, GGG. But there’s also the Irish comeback-king Andy Lee, who combines murderous punching power with an affinity for taking blows to the head into a can’t-miss fight, every time out.
Golovkin is well established. Lee has a huge following and he just gains more fans with each outing. Lemieux is the one still trying to climb that mountain to relevancy. But he’s certainly not lacking ammunition. And if he can put something spectacular together Saturday, he’ll set himself up for what is hopefully a big time fight against either guy. Golovkin is desperate for a name, and Lee will fight anything with a pulse, so it shouldn’t be terribly hard to put something together.
The biggest issue is getting there in the first place. Lemieux faltered in his only major step up in competition, and though he’s older and presumably wiser, he’s still only in his mid 20’s. He claims to not be overlooking N’Dam, but we’ve heard that before from countless fighters only to watch a potential money fight go up in flames for that exact reason.
But although N’Dam is tough, he’s not immovable. Quillin knocked him down about 36 times when they fought, so Lemieux should definitely be able to do some chin-denting here. The issue might again be stamina-related, so we’ll see if N’Dam will be able to drag this thing out at a measured pace until the later rounds. Will Lemieux have the same explosiveness in Round 11 as he will in the early rounds? He was still in good shape against Rosado in the late rounds, but Rosado was a disgusting mess and was offering little resistance near the end.
If he can finish N’Dam, who is currently ranked No. 7 by the Transnational Boxing Rankings Board, Lemieux will have not only secured a solid win, but he’ll have the added clout of being the first to stop him. Power punchers eat that stuff up. Frankly, so do fans.
There will always be a place in the sport for massive punchers, so this is certainly not the end of the line for the Canadian slugger if something disastrous occurs Saturday night. But he’s got to prove that he belongs in the ring with the elite of the division. A potential Golovkin-Lemieux matchup is absolutely scintillating to think about–neither guy takes a step back, and both play for blood. Ditto Lemieux vs. Lee.
But N’Dam is first, so it’s statement time for David Lemieux. Is he a banger with a limitless ceiling, or just another hard puncher who fizzles out at the end? I don’t think I’m alone in saying I’m excited as hell to find out.
You can never have too many punchers.
Some Random Notes From Last Weekend
Photo by Stephanie Trapp/Showtime
Deontay Wilder knocked out Eric Molina. That much, we kind of counted on. What we didn’t count on was seeing Molina rock “The Bronze Bomber” BADLY a couple of times. This is after all, the guy who Chris Arreola beheaded in the first round a few years ago. But Molina is a tough, tough hombre, and he hung in there for a hell of a lot longer than he had to. Still, although Wilder is built like a goddamn chiseled statue, there remains serious questions about his viability as an elite Heavyweight. None of them were answered Saturday.
HBO’s crew REALLY REALLY wants us to know how good Nicholas Walters is. The problem is that he looked like shit Saturday night even though they wouldn’t shut up about how talented he is. The fight was awful, and it looked worse yet after Felix Verdejo stole the show and kicked the piss out of Ivan Najera in the opening bout.
Fun Fact: Erislandy Lara is still excruciating to watch. Calling out GGG is pretty easy when there is zero chance of that fight happening at any time, ever. Despite fighting a guy who is absolutely shot, and despite landing 109 percent of his punches, and despite the fact that he could have stopped Delvin Rodriguez any time he felt like throwing a combination or two, he didn’t. He cruised. You’d think a guy who is constantly complaining about getting hosed by the judges wouldn’t appear so eager to leave fights in their hands. I know, I know, I don’t appreciate the subtle sport of boxing, right?
Artur Beterbiev has been near a fresh corpse before, possibly more than once. I’m just putting that out there.
Header photo by Vincent Ethier/EOTTM
