Whenever boxing throws up a can’t miss explosion of a fight, fans get hyped up and excited at the prospect of seeing another Hagler-Hearns or another Foreman-Lyle-type fight; these two classics being the benchmark when it comes to frenzied action fight slugfests. And, according to a news piece up on RingTV.com, one of these mouth-watering match-ups is a possibility for either October or November in Montreal, Canada.
The fight in question is a middleweight clash between punchers David Lemieux and Curtis Stevens. The fight is not a done deal yet, but Ring reports how Lemieux will fight in Montreal in either of October or November and that Kathy Duva of Main Events is “pushing hard for Stevens to get the assignment.” Let’s hope Duva is able to push hard enough and help make this fight. Both Lemieux, 35-3(32) and Stevens, 28-5(21) lost punishing fights to middleweight king Gennady Golovkin, but both men have bounced back after being stopped by GGG.
Lemieux looked good in crushing an overmatched Glen Tapia in May, while Stevens has had four fights since losing to GGG; winning two, then dropping a decision to Hassan N’Dam N’Jikam (the man Lemieux beat to win the IBF middleweight belt he lost to GGG), and then scoring an impressive stoppage win over unbeaten prospect Patrick Teixeira, also on the May 7th Canelo-Khan card. Put these two big-hitters together, as Duva is trying to do, and you have a potentially great action fight.
With a combined 53 KO’s between them and with both fighters possessing an instinctively aggressive style, this fight would be gelignite against dynamite, and the ending could come, with the blink of an eye, in any minute of any round. Lemieux says he wants another shot at GGG, while Stevens has a new trainer in the knowledgeable John David Jackson. Both warriors were far from finished by their respective defeats at the hands of Triple-G.
A hugely risky fight for both, a Lemieux-Stevens clash would be a possible FOTY candidate and it would almost certainly end via a destructive, possible KO of the Year, explosion. Indeed, explosion is the only word needed when it comes to attempting to predict this fight.
As to who wins – that’s a tough one. A 50-50 fight?