Gennady Golovkin vs David Lemieux

A left jab, repeated so often and landed so cleanly that David Lemieux struggled to set his feet, decided a meeting billed as a contest between two middleweight punchers. Before a sellout crowd of 20,548 at Madison Square Garden on 17 October 2015, Gennady Golovkin added Lemieux’s IBF title to the middleweight belts he already held. Referee Steve Willis stopped the fight at 1 minute 32 seconds of the eighth round, with Lemieux still on his feet but taking sustained punishment.

Both men had arrived with formidable knockout records, yet Golovkin made the opening round a measured boxing contest. He kept Lemieux at the end of his left hand, split his guard with the jab and gave him few settled chances to throw his right. The pattern continued in the second, when a hook to the body briefly forced Lemieux towards the ropes. Lemieux landed two rights in the third and showed that he remained dangerous, but Golovkin answered with combinations to the head and body and kept control of the distance.

Golovkin increased the force of his attack in the fourth. Two heavy rights hurt Lemieux, who retreated as the champion followed him to the ropes. Lemieux found a right of his own while moving away, though he could not halt the advance. In the fifth, he exchanged combinations with Golovkin, giving the crowd its first sustained passage of two-way fighting. The exchange favoured the champion. A three-punch attack ending with a left to the body sent Lemieux to one knee. Golovkin struck him again as he was going down, a late punch for which no point was taken. Lemieux beat the count and reached the bell.

Lemieux spent much of the sixth moving backwards. He landed a body shot, but Golovkin resumed his work and closed the round with an uppercut. By the seventh, Lemieux was bleeding from the nose and mouth, and Willis called for a ringside doctor to examine him before allowing the fight to continue. The champion’s jab and follow-up punches gave Lemieux little respite. In the eighth, Golovkin drove him towards the ropes and landed again to head and body. With Lemieux no longer answering effectively, Willis stepped between them.

There was no uncertainty on the official cards at the stoppage. Julie Lederman, Glenn Feldman and Steve Weisfeld had each scored all seven completed rounds for Golovkin, 70–62, including a 10–8 fifth. The punch figures told a similar story: Golovkin landed 280 of 549, against 89 of 335 for Lemieux. The Canadian had endured the body-shot knockdown and fought on under increasing pressure, but he never found a reliable way past the jab that governed the contest from its opening minute.

I remember the appeal of this one. Golovkin had stopped everyone put in front of him for years, and Lemieux had just won the IBF title with his heavy-handed victory over Hassan N’Dam. Plenty of people expected two punchers to stand and trade. What impressed me was how little Golovkin needed to trade at all.

He won the fight with his jab. It kept Lemieux at a distance where he had to reach for his power shots, and every time the Canadian tried to set his feet, another jab put him back off balance again. Golovkin hurt him in the fourth, then put him down with a left to the body in the fifth. I don’t excuse the punch he threw as Lemieux was going down; the referee should have addressed it. It did not account for the difference between them.

Lemieux showed courage and landed a few solid shots, but he could not make Golovkin fight at his pace. By the eighth, he was taking too much and answering too little. I thought Steve Willis was right to stop it. The crowd came to see which man could hit harder; Golovkin showed that his timing, balance and jab were what made his power so difficult to survive.