By Keith Idec
NEW YORK – According to Gennady Golovkin, he has never been knocked down as an amateur or professional boxer, neither during a fight nor a sparring session.
David Lemieux promised Wednesday to change that. The confident, powerful champion from Montreal said before the final press conference for their HBO Pay-Per-View main event Saturday night at Madison Square Garden that he expects to become the first fighter to knock down Golovkin.
“He has a good chin, but let’s see,” Lemieux said. “Let’s see. I’m ready to put that to the test. I think I will put him off of his feet. I’m pretty sure I will, so let’s see how tough his chin is. Yes, he has good chin and he’s a tough guy, but he’s only human.”
The 33-year-old Golovkin (33-0, 30 KOs), who owns the interim WBC, IBO and WBA “super” middleweight championships, has knocked out 20 straight opponents. The Kazakhstan native is a 16-1 favorite over the 26-year-old Lemieux (34-2, 31 KOs), who won the IBF 160-pound championship in his last fight – a 12-round, unanimous-decision defeat of France’s Hassan N’Dam (31-2, 18 KOs) during which Lemieux dropped N’Dam four times June 20 at Bell Centre in Montreal.
Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and krikya360.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.