By Keith Idec
NEW YORK – The fight David Lemieux wants most is a rematch with Gennady Golovkin.
There might not be much public demand outside of Quebec for a Golovkin-Lemieux rematch because Golovkin won their middleweight title fight so convincingly. The champion from Kazakhstan was way ahead on the scorecards (70-62, 70-62, 70-62) when he stopped Lemieux in the eighth round of their October 2015 fight at Madison Square Garden.
Golovkin floored Lemieux in the fifth round and was beating him easily when, with Lemieux still on his feet, referee Steve Willis stopped their scheduled 12-round fight.
Nonetheless, Lemieux says the winner of his fight Saturday night against Curtis Stevens should want to face Golovkin again. Golovkin also stopped Stevens after eight one-sided rounds in November 2013 in The Theater at Madison Square Garden.
“The real winner wants to go back to Golovkin,” Lemieux told a group of reporters this week.
When asked what would be different during a rematch against Golovkin, Lemieux replied, “A lot. But right now, I’m just concentrating on this fight. So when that fight happens, and when it happens, I’ll have a lot of answers for you.”
Lemieux laments that he wasn’t more aggressive against the hard-hitting Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs), who will face Daniel Jacobs (32-1, 29 KOs) on March 18 in an HBO Pay-Per-View main event at Madison Square Garden.
“I was a bit hesitant in that fight, not going in the way I usually go in, like a bull,” Lemieux said. “There’s a lot of things that my team and me will have to adjust when it comes to a fight of that sort. That door has to be opened. Right now we have Curtis Stevens. It’s a handful that we’re gonna have to handle on Saturday, so we just wanna do a great job, so we know what we’re worth and who we can get.”
HBO will televise the bout between Montreal’s Lemieux (36-3, 32 KOs) and Brooklyn’s Stevens (29-5, 21 KOs) as the main event of a “Boxing After Dark” doubleheader from Turning Stone Resort Casino in Verona, New York. The telecast is set to start at 11 p.m. ET with a 10-round junior lightweight bout that’ll match Cuban-born contender Yuriorkis Gamboa (25-1, 17 KOs) against Nicaragua’s Rene Alvarado (24-7, 16 KOs).
Lemieux is a 4-1 favorite over Stevens, but the former IBF middleweight champion and his trainer, Marc Ramsey, understand they can’t overlook Stevens. Lemieux also is a potential opponent for Mexican superstar Canelo Alvarez, but must beat Stevens to remain in contention for high-profile fights.
“We obviously want the biggest fights,” Ramsey said. “And Golovkin, we made a promise that we will fight him again and beat him next time. When it happens, we don’t really care. We’re not in a hurry. We’ve gotta take care of Stevens first.”
Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
