Lemieux to Stay at 160, Rehab Shoulder

[Ruthless-RKO]

Camille Estephan, the head of Eye of the Tiger Management, who handles Lemieux told BS.com on Monday, "You win some, you lose some when you're fighting with the top guys. We had a bad night at the office,(Saunders) had a great fight. So congrats to him."

The question is will Lemieux stay at middleweight?

"He's going to go stay at 160. We're not moving up in weight," said Estephan, who added, "The real issue is that his shoulder has been bothering him, whenever he threw a jab his (left) hand would fall. I don't know if you noticed it. He didn't throw as many jabs. Usually, he walks in with a double-jab, triple-jab and he couldn't. His hand would just fall right off.

"So he has a problem with his shoulder. The doctors are saying that surgery is not required. We already had talks with the doctor this morning. But we have to do a specific type of plan when it comes to rehab."

Estephan makes it clear - "I hate talking about injuries as an excuse, every fighter has injuries and it could've been perfect and we still could've lost, who knows? But what was disappointing is that we didn't do our best. We lost the fight. We would've like to have said,'He was at his best and he lost the fight.' We can't say that, now. So that was the major issue."

As for his return,"I don't think he'll fight before April or May. The rehab is a six-week thing. So it'll be four-to-six weeks, then camp. So I want to be sure we fix it once and for all. We can not put a band-aid on it."

Estephan came away impressed by Saunders.

"What I found Saunders to be good at is just how precise this guy is. He's got a certain confidence in his eyes and he's got real precision. So without a jab you're a sitting duck."

[Enlightened-One]

During Max Kellerman's post-fight interview with David Lemieux, the Canadian excused his poor performance on allegedly injuring his left hand during the second round and also due to Saunders’ constant "running."

However, according to my eyeballs, which seems to be backed-up by the CompuBox stats, the Canadian only landed two shots in total during the first round. His CompuBox punch stats for the Saunders fight are also pretty much in the same ballpark as those from his previous bouts.

Lemieux consistently threw the same amount of left handed punches for the entire duration of the bout and if Saunders really was “running” all the time, why was his face busted up?


I appreciate what Camille Estephan is trying to do, but Team Lemieux should really try to refrain from using excuses to justify their fighters’ poor performance.