By Luke Furman

Former IBF middleweight champion David Lemieux will be looking to make a real big statement on December 15th, when he faces Tureano Johnson at Madison Square Garden in New York City.

The bout will be the co-feature to the super middleweight main event, as Saul "Canelo" Alvarez (50-1-2, 34 KOs) will move up in weight to challenge WBA "regular" world champion Rocky Fielding (27-1- 0, 15 KOs).

"I'm going to get the knockout. [Johnson is] solid, so we'll see as we go. But yes [I'll win] inside twelve rounds," Lemieux told TVA Sports.

Lemieux has fought several times on undercards - where Canelo is featured in the main event.

Back in September, Lemieux scored a vicious first round knockout of Spike O'Sullivan - and that bout took place on the undercard of Canelo's rematch win over Gennady Golovkin.

Lemieux has not stopped training since that contest.

"[Training is] going really well. We have not stopped since the last fight. The energy is there. The diet is fine. I only took a week off after the last fight because I was planning to fight on December 15th. "

"The atmosphere and energy inside Madison Square Garden is absolutely mind-blowing. It was different from all of the other scenarios of where I boxed. It does not even compare. Against Golovkin, that's a long time ago [when I fought him in MSG] and there have been a lot of changes that have been made. Against Johnson, it's going to be different with a different result."

Although the fight against Johnson (20-2-0, 14 KOs) is very important for the rest of his career, Lemieux (40-4-0, 34 KOs) has only one goal in mind - to face Canelo in the near future.

"We know, me and my team, that we can beat Canelo," said Lemieux. "And that's why we want it so much. Sure it would be the biggest fight financially. So we want it, but not only because of the money, but because we are able to beat him."

Luke Furman covers boxing for bokser.org.