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David Lemieux may need more than power against Gennady Golovkin

The lure of Saturday’s middleweight title unification fight in New York between Gennady Golovkin and David Lemieux is power.

The two have combined to go 67-2 with 61 knockouts in their professional careers.

Gennady Golovkin, left, and David Lemieux pose during an August news conference. (AP)
Gennady Golovkin, left, and David Lemieux pose during an August news conference. (AP)

Golovkin has become a star during his four years competing in the United States, plowing through everyone put in front of him. He’s been reminiscent in many ways, if not in style then results, of a mid-1980s vintage Mike Tyson.

When Golovkin cleanly connects, the bout usually ends dramatically.

But Golovkin hasn’t been pushed. He hasn’t beaten a top-10 opponent. He hasn’t faced anyone who was given even a remote chance to defeat him.

And in boxing, it’s as much about whom you beat as anything else.

So Golovkin has the perfect foil in the French-speaking Lemieux, a dashing bilingual young man with a middleweight world title belt around his waist and plenty of dynamite in his fists.

Lemieux has knocked out 31 of the 36 men he’s faced, including 24 in either the first or the second round.

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A boxer with punching power is like a baseball team loaded with home-run hitters: No matter how badly it’s going, it can always turn around in an instant.

Lemieux, though, insists he brings more to the table than just his ability to end a fight with one well-placed blow.

“It's going to be a hard test in front of me, but I'm really not worried and, yes, I do have power, but I'm not going into this fight only with power,” he said. “I'm going to need all the tools in order to be sharp in a fight of this degree. He's a very good fighter, very smart, but I think I got a lot of surprises to show the world.”

Lemieux would do well to remember the words spoken by legendary middleweight champion Marvelous Marvin Hagler in 1985, just prior to the epic three-round match with Thomas Hearns.

Hagler heard much about Hearns’ punching power before the fight, and rightly so. Hearns had 34 knockouts in his 41 bouts heading into the match with Hagler and had starched some of the elite fighters in the world.

None of it mattered to Hagler, who after hearing about Hearns’ power one time too many responded by saying, “Yeah, but he’s never hit me.”

The point was that Hagler could take a punch quite well, thank you.

David Lemieux, right, works inside during his December 2014 win over Gabriel Rosado. (Getty)
David Lemieux, right, works inside during his December 2014 win over Gabriel Rosado. (Getty)

And so, too, can Golovkin, who has sparred with much bigger and harder-hitting fighters than Lemieux and has never been down. Golovkin sparred regularly for a while with reigning light heavyweight champion Sergey Kovalev, and Golovkin’s trainer, Abel Sanchez, said never once did Kovalev hurt Golovkin.

In several hundred pro and amateur fights, Golovkin has never been off his feet.

If the fight turns into a shootout, as many think that it might, Lemieux will have to contend with Golovkin’s enormous power.

Given that one of the two losses on Lemieux’s record was a knockout defeat at the hands of Marco Antonio Rubio, a man Golovkin dismissed in two rounds, it doesn’t look good for Lemieux if they get into a slugfest.

But fighters evolve over time, and Lemieux said it’s unfair to judge him by that one night.

“Those two losses are completely insignificant to where I am today, because, you know, everybody has their path, everybody has their ways of doing things and their evolution and becoming a champion,” he said. “Some guys go undefeated, some have defeats and become the greatest fighter out there. They have zero significance and are in my past. Those two losses were miscalculations. I lost those two fights because of things I neglected, and I changed everything in my life to be where I am at today.”

Lemieux was knocked out by Rubio in the seventh round on April 8, 2011. In his next fight, he lost a majority decision to an already fading Joachim Alcine.

Lemieux has won nine in a row since the Alcine loss on Dec. 10, 2011, including seven by stoppage. In his last three bouts, he’s beaten Fernando Guerrero via third-round knockout, Gabe Rosado by 10th-round stoppage and Hassan N’Dam by unanimous decision.

He took stock of his life and his career after the back-to-back losses in 2011 and made himself a better fighter. That’s much to his credit.

“I think it's been a big achievement on my behalf to get where I am now, and the changes that I have needed to do to [wind up] fighting for a unification title,” he said. “It's a big step I took, and the numbers speak for themselves.

“Everybody understands the gravity of this fight, and I think the people are going to be surprised with what I bring to the table [Saturday]. I'm a big underdog in this fight, and to me it makes no difference. I know who I am, and I know what I'm going to bring to the table, so we will see after the fight.”

Lemieux unquestionably has a lot of firepower. Just ask quality fighters like Guerrero and Rosado, and they’d tell you that.

But like Hagler said in 1985, Lemieux hasn’t hit Golovkin yet. And, perhaps most importantly, he hasn’t been hit by the likes of Golovkin himself.

If he can survive that, he may wind up with a better outcome than Hearns, who was knocked out in the third round by Hagler.

The Hagler-Hearns fight is always in the discussion when the topic of the greatest bout in boxing history arises.

Lemieux doesn’t necessarily aspire to that. But if he can dent the Golovkin armor just a bit, things could be very interesting on Saturday.

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