By Mark Vester
Russ Anber, the trainer for middleweight contender David Lemieux (25-1, 24KOs), said his boxer abandoned their planned strategy in the recent WBC eliminator with Marco Antonio Rubio. Last Friday at the Bell Centre in Montreal, Lemieux started strong but faded in the later rounds as Rubio took over ther fight and stopped him in the seventh.
Anber says Lemieux, 22-years-old, stepped away from their strategy while attempting to secure a quick knockout to satisfy the live crowd. The strategy was to take Rubio into deep waters by breaking him down slowly, but Lemieux was going for a knockout in every round.
"It's youth. David really wanted to please the public. But this was not what we had prepared to do in the gym. Our strategy was to run a marathon, but David decided to run 200 meters. Even at ESPN, they heard us, we told David to calm down, but it lasted 30 seconds and then he would go for the knockout. And when you spend too much time looking for something, that's when you lose. You need confidence, but when you have too much of it - you become deaf. You lose your ears. Young people lose sight of reality. They see a mirage," Anber told Alex Lebrun.
