Boxing Challenge; Saunders Whitewashes Lemieux

I was very late in getting picks from Ramon Malpica for the boxing challenge for the final challenge of the year and therefore didn't have a preview of a fight for the lightly regarded title that was best known as the only title belt that Gennady Golovkin didn't own.

David Lemieux was favored by most to defeat lightly regarded WBO middleweight champ, Billy Joe Saunders.
After all, Lemieux is the much harder puncher, had the home court advantage and had been more active of late against better competition.
Everything pointed to Lemieux, but as I said on FightHeads last Monday night, something was telling me to pick Saunders, who hadn't looked impressive in his two title defenses against nondescript opponents and had just two overall wins against world class opponents (Decision wins over Chris Eubank Jr and Andy Lee).

That something proved right as not only did Saunders pull the minor upset on the road to retain his title, Saunders did it so impressively that not only did he win by a wide margin, on my card, he won every round (120-108) and might have have even moved into consideration for some pound for pound votes on the lower end of the top ten.
Billy Joe Saunders fought that well.

Saunders boxed, jabbed, moved and controlled every part of the game that you can describe and turned the dangerous Lemieux into just another frustrated fighter looking for a desperate hail mary that had little hopes of being answered.
Saunders even used the bolo punch and Ali shuffle as part of exasperating Lemieux into submission and was able to show that just because you are "boxing" doesn't mean that you have to be boring while you are doing it.

Saunders called out Gennady Golovkin after the bout and it didn't seem so ludicrous as it may have sounded an hour before.
Golovkin or Canelo Alvarez would still be favored against Saunders, but the Saunders that fought last night in Quebec would give both fighters fits and would be a live underdog to pull a massive upset.
Let's hope that we see more of Billy Joe Saunders in 2018 and that he doesn't slip back into his inactive ways against poor opposition again.

As for David Lemieux, it's pretty clear that he's a top ten level fighter that really isn't an elite level fighter.
Lemieux can be a fun fighter to watch and can be part of some really exciting fights, but he will always have problems with boxers and he does have a tendency to slide into a passive mode at a certain point in fights when adversity strikes.

Billy Joe Saunders might not be the most exciting fighter in the middleweight division or even the best, but he might have taken one of Gennady Golovkin's titles without Golovkin even knowing it- Saunders might have just become the most avoided man in the middleweight division...