By Luke Furman
According to Camille Estephan from Eye of The Tiger Management, former IBF middleweight world champion David Lemieux will be moving up to the super middleweight division.
Lemieux (40-4, 34 KOs) was scheduled to fight last Saturday night at New York's Madison Square Garden, but he was pulled from the card when he failed to make the middleweight limit for a bout with Tureano Johnson. He was severely dehydrated and was taken to a local hospital.
"We're going to fight at 168 lbs and we'll see what he's going to do," said Estephan to TVA Sports. "Before that, we will take time to regulate his metabolism and identify what is wrong with him. We want to know why his body does not always react in the same way during weight cuts."
The main event of that MSG card had Saul "Canelo" Alvarez heading up to super middleweight to demolish Rocky Fielding for the WBA "regular" super middleweight title.
It was likely that Lemieux would have faced Canelo on May 4 at middleweight, where the Mexican superstar owns the WBC, WBA world titles. But now Lemieux might have to face him at super middleweight - if that fight is even still in play.
Some of Lemieux's countrymen, like Adonis Stevenson and Jean Pascal, found far more success when they moved up a weight division.
"I made the jump after my fight against Carl Froch in 2008 where I had a hard time getting down in weight," said Pascal when joined by Le Journal de Montréal. "When you climb division, you have more energy and more cardio. Climbing up a weight division, it's a bit scary because it's unknown."
Pascal believes that it was not normal to see Lemieux take off almost 20 pounds after weighing in in September.
"After weighing in, you can take 10 to 15 pounds off before getting into the ring with your rehydration. If it's more than that, it may mean that you're not in the right division. For David, I have no doubt that he can give trouble to several elite boxers 168-pounds," Pascal said.
Luke Furman covers boxing for bokser.org.
