This won’t be a long piece, but it’s my birthday today so the fact I’m sober enough to get anything to you is a miracle in the first place. So praise your deity of choice, here’s a fluff piece. In a perfect birthday present to me, Gennady “GGG” Golovkin beat dangerous challenger David Lemieux pillar to post until the referee stopped the fight in the eighth round.
That stoppage has been, of course, challenged by Lemieux and more than a few people agree it was premature. I personally don’t believe it was premature and that Steve Willis was doing his duty.
So what made this a legitimate stoppage?
Damage
While Lemieux didn’t have a ghastly cut or an eye swollen shut, his face showed how devastating Golovkin’s power was.
Golovkin didn’t land many clean power shots to Lemieux’s head, but he used his absolute sledgehammer of a jab to break the French-Canadian’s nose and raise enormous welts all over his face. The wiped up, iced down Lemieux at the post fight gives a watered down image of the damage but all you have to know is that one of the only clean power shots Golovkin landed on the head produced this:
The image lends perspective to the damage to Lemieux’s nose from Golovkin’s thudding left, and why the referee allowed the doctor to check it. A jab is usually the fastest, least telegraphed punch in a fighter’s arsenal. A fighter who has spent eight rounds taking the full brunt of it is unlikely (or unable) to adapt to it.
With the damage Lemieux was taking, there was no reason to let him take more.
A Situation Spiraling Out of Control
Golovkin was in control for the whole fight and the mismatched nature of the contest only grew more pronounced every round.
In the early rounds, Golovkin was content to stay at range and tattoo Lemieux with his jab every time he even thought about punching.
Close the distance? Jab. Try a power punch? Jab. Breathe? Jab.
By the end of the third round Lemieux’s confidence and composure was beginning to erode as he found himself unable to land anything significant in the rounds where he stood the best chance of scoring an upset. Starting in the fourth round, Golovkin began backing down Lemieux and unleashing his looping power shots that culminated in a liver shot knock down in round 5.
In the final rounds Golovkin seemed to realize the same thing everyone else did: Lemieux couldn’t hurt him. He went into full predator mode, allowing Lemieux’s desperate power hooks to glance off his shoulders while sinking body and head shots nearly at will.
If the fight had been allowed to progress, the onslaught’s brutality would have only increased. By the time the referee stepped in Lemieux was eating Golovkin’s body-head power combinations in a way that suggested he wouldn’t have made it out of the tenth round. There’s no need to see him take the full brunt of a GGG slaughter.
The referee himself (Steve Willis) put it best:
“David is a very competitive fighter and as long as he was able to throw punches he was going to keep on trying, but his chances of winning were decreasing as the fight went on. Against a guy like (Golovkin) he was going to get really hurt and I’m here to protect the fighter’s health and that’s my top priority.”
Outclassed and Knowing it
Lemieux may genuinely believe the stoppage was early, but I suspect it came more from his wounded pride more than anything. See, we use the word “outclassed” without understanding what a truly hurtful term it is for a competitor.
When you say someone is being outclassed, what you are saying is that they literally did not possess the talent necessary to win. You say that their loss wasn’t a result of a bad game plan or unrefined skills but that at their best they were the inferior competitor.
Unfortunately, David Lemieux was outclassed.
For all his improvements in ring craft and the development of his left hook money punch, he looked absolutely lost against Golovkin. He couldn’t get past the Kazakh destroyer’s jab and when he did, he found the same power shots that had felled 7 of his last 9 opponents kept glancing off Golovkin’s shoulders. In the rare moments when he did land cleanly, it was apparent that his power (the one advantage he may have had) didn’t bother Golovkin while the shots he ate in return sent him stumbling.
His puncher’s chance virtually eradicated, there was no reason for Steve Willis to let Lemieux take more punishment in a fight he had no chance of winning.
Plus people have pointed out that you can see Lemieux glance at the referee during the final onslaught that cornered him.
While I don’t think Lemieux was “looking for a way out”, I think his eye contact with the referee was a tacit acknowledgment that he was getting pummeled. Sure he hadn’t been knocked down again (as he stressed in the post-fight) but even he seemed to know that the fight was moving from one-sided to downright dangerous.
It’s a tricky stoppage, but the right one. Steve Willis had a duty to protect David Lemieux and there’s absolutely no doubt he did. Maybe we didn’t see Golovkin expand his highlight reel of knockouts but the tradeoff is the Lemieux, at only 26 years old, will walk out of the fight relatively unscathed and can continue his career.
And we should be proud of the referee for allowing that.
