WBO middleweight titleholder Billy Joe Saunders has his most difficult task yet this weekend when he fights on the road against power punching contender David Lemieux. This is a very good main event to close the year out in terms of televised boxing in America. There are two televised undercard bouts in support as well.
Billy Joe Saunders (25-0, 12 KOs) won his WBO belt two years ago ago in a vacant title fight over Andy Lee in a pretty dreadful affair. Somehow this will only be his third defense in that time. Last December, Saunders met little known challenger Artur Akavov in what looked like a walkover. He managed to really struggle there, however, and had a much more difficult time retaining than anticipated. Saunders also won a less than exciting fight in September against Willie Monroe, but that was always going to be a bad style matchup for action. Plus, he was originally set to defend against all action Avtandil Khurtsidze before his legal issues derailed that, so it is hard to hold that against the British world titleholder. Regardless, however, the Billy Joe Saunders title reign has not been inspiring.
One way or another, this changes Saturday thanks to David Lemieux (38-3, 33 KOs). For one, it is kind of amazing that Saunders is traveling to the lion’s den here to meet the Montreal fighter in Montreal. That is a bold move. For two, fighting David Lemieux at all is a bold move. While the French-Canadian power puncher has always been a step below world class, he is simply a monstrous puncher and Saunders had not exactly proved himself to be a world level fighter either. The 28 year old is 13-1 in the last five years with the one loss coming against divisional king Gennady Golovkin. Lemieux has amassed stoppage wins over the likes of Fernando Guerrero, Hassan N’Dam, Glen Tapia, and Curtis Stevens during that run, with the last one over Stevens being a monster knockout of the year candidate.
I did think that Lemieux really did struggle last time out against underrated Mexican super middleweight Marcos Reyes, however. That fight has largely been forgotten thanks to the horrific main event that night between Canelo Alvarez and a heavy bag painted to look like Julio Cesar Chavez Jr, but it still happened. Reyes was able to outbox Lemieux in stretches and Billy Joe Saunders is a better boxer than Marco Reyes. There is also the fact that David Lemieux has to kill himself to make 160 every single time, so there is always some question concerning the conditioning of the 28 year old contender.
Basically this all boils down to the fact that this is a real good HBO main event. Billy Joe Saunders is more skilled and perfectly capable of outboxing David Lemieux, but can he do it for 12 rounds without getting caught? Only GGG has been able to avoid doing so against this modern version of Lemieux. Plus, how will the crowd factor in to any potential judging? This is intriguing stuff.
Unfortunately, the co-main event is much less interesting. Antoine Douglas (22-1-1, 16 KOs) was considered a major middleweight prospect, but the aforementioned Avtandil Khurtsidze saw to the end of that with a thorough beating last March. He is the favorite here against Gary “Spike” O’Sullivan (26-2, 18 KOs), however, as the Irish middleweight has been easily controlled by both Chris Eubank Jr and the main event’s Billy Joe Saunders when attempting to step up. Using an HBO co-main event to attempt to rebuild a once promising prospect who had no former ties to the network would not have happened just a few years ago, but this is where HBO is at today.
“The Hebrew Hammer” Cletus Seldin (21-0, 17 KOs) will make his second appearance in about a month on HBO against once beaten Montreal prospect Yves Ulysse Jr (14-1, 9 KOs). Seldin is a real limited fighter, but he is also a big, charismatic puncher with a built in fanbase on Long Island so it does make a level of sense that they’d try to hype him as a contender at welterweight. Ulysse Jr’s record might show him coming off his first loss, but it was a poor decision that he should have won. I actually think the Montreal fighter has everything he needs physically to outbox Seldin and end this hype train in a hurry, but we’ll see if he can avoid the power. Really, this is lower level mirror image of the main event stylistically with Seldin playing the Lemieux roll and Ulysse trying to outbox him like Saunders.
HBO’s broadcast will begin at 9:40 PM Eastern Saturday night.
