by Steve Kim
While he faces James De la Rosa on the Sergey Kovalev-Andre Ward pay-per-view undercard from the T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas, Curtis Stevens clearly has his eyes on a particular target in 2017.
"Right now, after I'm done with this, like I said I want (David) Lemieux,"said Stevens, a couple of weeks ago at the Robert Garcia Boxing Academy in Oxnard, California, where a media day was held for this show."If 'Canelo'(Saul Alvarez) moving up in weight to 160, I'd like to welcome him with open arms, that's if Golden Boy gives the fight to me."
For the better part of 2016 Stevens and Lemieux have been trading verbal shots in the media.
"Lemieux talks a lot of sh*t, so being that he talks a lot of sh*t, he's saying he'd knock me out or I wouldn't last five rounds in his world, etc, etc," said Stevens, who's never been afraid to express himself.
"So I call him out and then his promoter says he doesn't want to fight me. Then he comes to say he does want to fight, all of a sudden now. So being he wants to fight now I say,'OK, lets meet.' Then he says HBO doesn't have the budget - then they make other fights. So I don't know who's lying in this case."
When contacted about the possibility of a bout with Stevens, Camille Estephan who handles Lemieux told BoxingScene.com on Wednesday - "What does he have to offer other than a big mouth? I feel like he's spoken so much that he's really turned me off. I don't know, he doesn't have much to offer."
So is that a flat-out rejections of Stevens?
"No, but look this is the fight game and of course people talk, they don't like each other or like each other, whatever, but this guy wants attention all the time, shooting his mouth off all day long. I don't like that type of guy,"said Estephan, the head of Eye of the Tiger Management.
Steve Kim is the news editor for BoxingScene.com.
