By Luke Furman
Eye of The Tiger Management was hoping to land Curtis Stevens as the opponent for IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux, but that won't happen according to Canadian outlet RDS.
Instead, Lemieux will face face Argentine fighter Cristian Fabian Rios on October 22nd at the Bell Centre in Montreal, and the fight is scheduled to be officially announced on Tuesday afternoon at a press conference in Montreal.
For Lemieux (35-3, 32 KOs), it will be his first fight since his stoppage win over Glen Tapia in May at the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.
Rios (21-7-3, 6 KOs) has never been stopped. He went to six round draw with countryman Jorge Sebastian Heiland in 2012, and lost a ten round decision to British contender Tommy Langford last year. On paper, however, he has never faced a fighter of the caliber of Lemieux.
According to sources that spoke with RDS, HBO was unable to fit Lemieux-Stevens into their budget for this fall - and that forced Eye of The Tiger to revise their plans. The network has reportedly cut down their budget this year and a lot of their key fighters are returning on pay-per-view or attempting to jump ship to other networks. HBO was interested in placing Lemieux-Stevens on the pay-per-view undercard of Sergey Kovalev vs. Andre Ward on November 19 in Las Vegas, but the financial terms would not have been satisfactory for the Canadian star.
Stevens, like Lemieux, was showcased on that May undercard to Canelo Alvarez vs. Amir Khan. Many felt the fights were put together to create a future opponent for Canelo or to match the two sluggers in the fall. Stevens (28-5, 21 KO), 31 years, blew away previously undefeated Patrick Teixeira in two rounds.
Luke Furman covers boxing for bokser.org.
