Billy Joe Saunders (c) vs. David Lemieux - December 16th 2017

[BitPlayer]

Am I missing something here? Lemieux was robbed.

You missed the fight apparently.

[Oiky]

Must be stark raving mad if you seriously believe Lemeiux was robbed?

[jamamb]

pretty sure hes joking

[Tony1244]

Am I missing something here? Lemieux was robbed.

That's too bad. Was it his home or hotel room? Hope they get the burglars.

[wesshaw1985]

[Grilling Machine]

Saunders is a negative boxer with a positive attitude to it. He spent 90% of the fight letting Lemieux throw shots from range, believing in his ability to avoid them. Lemieux became more and more frustrated until he started lunging, at which point Saunders would turn to plant his feet to fire two or three shots to put Lem back in his box. His occasional leads were also quite effective for their unpredictably reserved employment. That was the pattern of the whole fight. It's incredibly hard to land on someone who isn't looking to fight fire with fire, because that makes you more self-conscious about how telegraphed your shots are, often exacerbating the situation. Limited power-punchers like Lemieux thrive on interruptions, risking taking punches to land bigger ones.

Tyson and Hughie fight in the same way, and I saw shades of Parker-Fury in this one. Albeit Parker was good enough to grind his win. Saunders is brilliant on his bike, but I feel we need to see if Golovkin or Canelo can push him off it in the corners or on the ropes. They've slower feet, so I'd anticipate a hard night for both, but neither would be silly enough to bull against the matador as angrily — and thus ineffectively — as Lemieux. Nor Jacobs, who's arguably the most intelligent middleweight since Pirog.

Had Lemieux refused to chase, I can well imagine the ref taking points for inaction. Rawling had a go at him for his post-fight interview, but I think it's possible that he did have a slight problem with his left hand, since he mostly threw lunging jabs with it. Maybe he wasn't confident in its health to cut off the ring with angles; maybe he wasn't mentally confident enough to try; or I think most likely a bit of both, tied to his too-slow footwork. But it's true that Saunders backpedalled him into submission, so I disagree with Rawling's criticism of Lem's take on the fight. He was beaten fairly, but he's entitled to that view.

This fight raised more questions than answers for me, the same as Fury-Klitschko. I still believe that Joshua and Wilder (and the Klitschko that fought Joshua) would stop Fury, and though Golovkin's too much of a crowd-pleaser to make the Saunders fight easy for himself, I think he has the overall skills to find a way to win. Possibly with a focus on Saunders' body. What's interesting is that Canelo was able to wriggle out of corners against Golovkin, so if there's a blueprint to beat him then Saunders has a good portion of it. The problem is that Golovkin's not daft enough to walk into round-losing shots out of frustration unless he's doing something that's ultimately more rewarding.

[Taansend]

Am I missing something here? Lemieux was robbed.

That's too bad. Was it his home or hotel room? Hope they get the burglars.

[Taansend]

Can anyone get a photo or video of Saunders when he made Lemieux miss & then he looked out into the crowd with his glove over his eyes. Somewhere around 8-10th round.

[fightfan95]

Can anyone get a photo or video of Saunders when he made Lemieux miss & then he looked out into the crowd with his glove over his eyes. Somewhere around 8-10th round.

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-lang="en-gb"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Billy Joe Saunders goes looking for Lemieux&#39;s missing punch. Next level taunting. 1,000% approve. <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/SaundersLem ... Lemieux</a> <a href="https://t.co/dpWF9hL2P5">pic.twitter.co ... </p>&mdash; Chris O&#39;Shea (@ChrisJOShea) <a href=" December 2017</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

[Oiky]

That was comical

[Tony1244]

Am I missing something here? Lemieux was robbed.

That's too bad. Was it his home or hotel room? Hope they get the burglars.

Has Saunders gotten much better or was Lemieux just that bad? I've seen Saunders before and he was boring and mediocre. Against Lemieux he was so much better, what happened?

[Terminator666]

Anyone else think there was a couple of rounds where BJS could have stopped him? One around the middle rounds looked like if he had thrown a few more punches could have got the stoppage and there was one where he seemed to stun Lemieux a few rounds later but backed off

[youngrell]

Think it was R7, looked like a stoppage win was near but he didn't rush in (as per corner instructions) and continued to control the fight as he had been.

Would have made his win even more emphatic but it was also pleasing to see a fighter with such control and discipline. If he rushed in and got caught, all that hard work in the preceding rounds would have been forgotten.

[BitPlayer]

[wesshaw1985]

[Covfefe]

Just got round to watching it, what a great performance. He made Lemieux look like an amateur, my only criticism of him is where is the body work? If he worked the body he’d have stopped him that night, other than that he looked as good as he ever has, he didn’t gas as badly as he has before either but I put that down to how poor Lemieux was. Terrible plodding performance just following Saunders and throwing winged power shots all night. I’m glad Saunders took the piss.

[DrDuke]

It was probably the best performance of Saunders, a master-class.