Former champ falls again
Montreal pugilist Lemieux drops unanimous decision to Saunders
LAVAL, QUE. — The bottom line from David Lemieux’s lopsided loss to England’s Billy Joe Saunders is that the Laval, Que. boxer has a long way go if he is ever to be middleweight (154-160 pounds) champion again.
Only four months after winning the International Boxing Federation title in 2015, Lemieux was taken out in eight one-sided rounds by Kazakh star Gennady Golovkin.
He won four bouts in a row to get into position for another title clash, only to be outclassed by World Boxing Organization champ Saunders (26-0) on Saturday night at the Place Bell arena.
“Did I not tell you it was going to be an easy fight?” Saunders said after the 12-round unanimous decision. “I told you he’s not going to hit me and he didn’t hit me.”
That was clear in the Compubox statistics. Saunders outlanded Lemieux 162 to 67, including 103-12 with the jab.
Local judge Benoit Roussel was alone among the three to give Saunders every round for a 120108 score. Phil Edwards of Britain had it 118-110 while Gerardo Martinez of Puerto Rico was 117-111.
Lemieux may have been given the last round because Saunders, knowing he had won, spent the three minutes dancing around without really throwing any punches. Two other rounds, the sixth and the 11th, were somewhat close.
Otherwise, Lemieux could not find an answer to the southpaw’s elusive, hit-but-don’t-get-hit style.
Lemieux spent the night lunging forward and missing. In the fifth round, Saunders mocked him by swivelling his head as if to see where a wild punch may have landed.
“The speed of Saunders footwork was very problematic,” said Lemieux’s trainer Marc Ramsay.
Lemieux said in his post-fight interview in the ring with the U.S. specialty channel HBO that he was hampered by a hand injury suffered in the second round.
Ramsay, who gave Saunders full credit for the win, later clarified that it was a left shoulder injury.
“We had an injury before to that shoulder but I’m not sure it’s the same,” said Ramsay. “At the beginning we wanted to counter his jab.
“You can’t let a guy like that get comfortable with it,” he added. “We wanted to counter it with the left hook but he wasn’t able to do it at all.”
Saunders, whose camp had suspected Lemieux had shoulder trouble, won over a lot of believers in North America with his performance, which was his main goal when he opted to fight outside Britain for the first time in his career. It also got his mandatory defence of the WBO title against top-ranked contender Lemieux out of the way.
The 28-year-old Saunders showed he would be a dangerous opponent for the two big guns in the division — Golovkin and Mexico’s Saul (Canelo) Alvarez, who are due for a rematch of their September megafight that ended in a draw.
“It means I’m the best now,” said Saunders. “Golovkin or Canelo, I’m ready.”
Meanwhile, Lemieux is expected to get back on his horse and try again. Manager Camille Estephan expects him to fight in May if the injury, a suspected bruise inside the shoulder, heals by then.
“It’s not a disaster,” said Estephan. “It’s a small step back. Not even.
“David is a fighter that is exciting, that American television and the fans want to see, and there are a lot of fights we want to do that are good fights. From a business standpoint, we didn’t go backwards that much, if at all.”
Lemieux hoped to add to Canada’s world title holders, which includes World Boxing Council light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson of Montreal and Artur Beterbiev, a Montrealbased Russian who holds the IBF light heavyweight belt.
The fight drew a near sellout of 7,836 to Place Bell. They saw some entertaining bouts, including local favourite Yves Ulysse Jr. handing Cletus (Hebrew Hammer) Seldin a first defeat and Custio Clayton of Dartmouth, N.S. taking the minor WBO International welterweight belt with a convincing win over Cristian Coria of Argentina.
Irish middleweight Gary (Spike) O’Sullivan won a slugfest with American Antoine Douglas, while local prospects Simon Kean and Steven Butler both won. Almost lost in the shuffle was two-time Olympic champion Nicola Adams of Britain improving to 3-0 as a pro against Mexico’s Yoseline Martinez in a women’s flyweight bout.