Lemieux picks Golovkin to defeat Canelo

By Jeff Aranow: David Lemieux is projecting a victory for Gennady Golovkin in his rematch with Saul Canelo Alvarez in less than three week from now on September 15. Lemieux (39-4, 33 KOs) sees the Canelo-Golovkin 2 fight being a close one, but he expects Golovkin (38-0-1, 33 KOs) take the victory in their fight at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Lemieux, 29, will be fighting on the undercard against #3 WBA, #3 WBO, #13 IBF Gary ‘Spike’ O’Sullivan (28-2, 20 KOs) in a 12 round fight on HBO pay-per-view

Lemieux doesn’t agree with the previous Canelo vs. Golovkin fight being scored a 12 round draw. Lemieux says he saw Golovkin winning that fight. But as far as the rematch goes, Lemieux feels that the hungrier and more prepared fighter will win the Canelo-GGG2 rematch. Lemieux hopes that a victory over the 34-year-old O’Sullivan will get him a shot against the winner of the Canelo-Golovkin 2 fight. If it’s Golovkin, Lemieux thinks he’ll be more prepared for the rematch. GGG knocked out Lemieux in the 8th round in October 2015. Lemieux has won five of six fights since then. His only loss in the last three years was his 12 round unanimous decision defeat at the hands of WBO middleweight champion Billy Joe Saunders last December. It was such a one-sided fight that was embarrassing. Lemieux looked like he wasn’t fully prepared for Saunders’ movement and boxing skills.

“I thought Golovkin won the first fight,” Lemieux said to Kevin Iole of Yahoo Sports News in giving his thoughts on last September’s Canelo vs. GGG fight. “It was not a one-sided fight. I didn’t see it as a draw. Canelo is a great fighter. He’s a very strong guy with strong hands. Golovkin is just a heavy puncher. He comes in and he’s pressuring you. He has a great style and great technical abilities. It’s going to be an interesting fight. I think the one that is more hungry and more prepared is going to win the fight. In his last fight, I saw a little decline on his side. In his last three or four fights, I could see he wasn’t as crisp as he was five or six fights ago, but maybe he’s going to be better prepared for this fight. We’ll see,” Lemieux said.

The reason Golovkin didn’t look as good in his fights against Canelo, Daniel Jacobs and Kell Brook is he didn’t attack them the way he had his other opponents during his career. Golovkin tried to box them, and this made the fights harder than they should have been. Golovkin can’t get in a boxing match with Canelo in the rematch because if he does that, he’ll be fighting his game and that’ll make it very hard for him to get the victory. As the saying goes, ‘don’t box with a boxer.’ If Golovkin wants to beat Canelo, he’s going to need to slug with him and look to defeat him in the same way he beat most of his other opponents during his career.

Lemieux’s thoughts on the first Canelo vs. Golovkin fight echoes those of a lot of the boxing fans. They didn’t see the fight as a draw. They mostly felt Golovkin deserved the win. The judges saw it differently though, so Golovkin ended up with a draw. Both fighters are going to need to come up with a different strategy for the rematch of they want to convince the judges and the boxing fans that they deserve the win. This means that Golovkin I going to need to mix it up a lot more with Canelo, and stick close to him so that he can’t escape the pressure like he did in the first fight.

”They’re both great fighters. Canelo, I wouldn’t be surprised if he brings an upset,” Lemieux said. ”It’s a close fight, but I think Golovkin takes it again.”

What makes it difficult to pick Canelo in the rematch is his muscle atrophy. He’s gone a little overboard in trying to fix his stamina problems by reducing the muscle mass that he packed on for the first GGG fight. Canelo would have been smarter to take off a small amount of muscle, and focus on using the same round-stealing strategy that he used in the last fight to try and beat him. Canelo’s decision to slim down could result in him not having the size and muscle mass to compete against Golovkin the second time around. Even with Canelo being bigger, he was still weaker than Golovkin. Canelo had more mass than Golovkin, but the size didn’t amount to equal or more punching power. Golovkin was simply the stronger fighter. However, Golovkin had problems landing his shots due to Canelo’s head and upper body movement. He was making Golovkin miss with a lot of shots, and that helped him win rounds even when he was being outworked by him. The judges were impressed with the way that Canelo was making Golovkin miss with his shots.

The Canelo-GGG2 undercard is stacked with talent. The fights aren’t competitive on paper, but the talent on the undercard if impressive to behold. Here are the fights:

– Roman Gonzalez facing Moises Fuentes – This is Chocolatito’s first fight since his second loss to Srisaket Sor Rungvisai. Gonzalez’s management have picked out a flyweight for him to face to get his confidence back in matching him against the 31-year-old Fuentes (25-5-1, 14 KOs), who has lost 3 out of his last 4 fights. If Gonzalez (46-2, 38 KOs) can’t beat Fuentes then he needs to pack it in and retire from boxing, because this is a guy that he needs to be able to beat for him to be still a major player at 115.

– Jaime Munguia vs. Brandon Cook – Munguia (30-0, 25 KOs) defends his WBO junior middleweight title against Cook (20-1, 14 KOs) in the co-feature bout. This isn’t the greatest match-up that could be made for the 21-year-old Munguia, but his last fight against Liam Smith showed that he needs to be brought along slowly to help him develop his boxing skills more before he’s matched against the better fighters in the junior middleweight division. Cook, 32, is a fighter, but he’s not good enough to beat Munguia.

– Vergil Ortiz Jr. vs. Roberto Ortiz – The unbeaten light welterweight Vergil Ortiz (10-0, 10 Kos) is a big puncher with talent that could take him one day to world title. Roberto Ortiz (35-3-2, 26 KOs) is a big puncher in his own right, and he’s been inside the ring with Lucas Matthysse and Cletus Seldin. Unfortunately, he lost to both of them. Vergil will get a chance to show that he can look as good if not better than those fighters did in beating Roberto.