De La Hoya: If Lemieux beats Saunders, Lemieux vs Canelo on the cards…

The Former IBF World Middleweight Champion, David Lemieux (38-3) will make his long-awaited return to world championship boxing before the current year reaches its conclusion. As we reported 8 days ago, a deal has been struck to see Lemieux challenge the undefeated WBO middleweight champion, Billy Joe Saunders (25-0) for December 16th.

Former 6-weight world champion and the face behind the Golden Boy brand, Oscar De La Hoya recently touched on the topic with the Los Angeles Times. De La Hoya has promised lucrative incentives to help fuel the fire behind his fighter’s ambitions; dangling the potential of a mammoth payday in a box office event against the lineal middleweight champion and one of boxing’s most marketable athletes in Saul ‘Canelo’ Alvarez (49-1-2). Golden Boy Promotions currently promote both Alvarez and Lemieux and that matchup could make more sense to them as they go forward.

De La Hoya is currently locked in negotiations with K2 promotions, attempting to finalise the details on the highly anticipated May 2018 return bout between ‘Canelo’ Alvarez and the current WBC, WBA, IBF and IBO World Middleweight Kingpin Gennady Golovkin (37-0-1). There have been murmurs of disagreement on a number of details holding back a deal being struck and De La Hoya, however, has laid the groundwork for a contingency plan in the form of a Lemieux vs Alvarez clash.

“What a great fight for Lemieux and Saunders, and for boxing to finish this great year,” De La Hoya was quoted as saying by the Los Angeles Times. De La Hoya stated his excitement at the prospect of another mouth-watering middleweight championship bout coming so soon after Canelo vs Golovkin, continuing “This is great, too, for the division that already has Canelo and Triple-G.

Touching on what is at stake for his fighter, Lemieux in his upcoming fight, De La Hoya shared “This fight’s a tremendous opportunity for Lemieux. He’d become the missing piece of the puzzle. I do want to come to terms and make that rematch, but if we can’t come to terms … and Lemieux looks spectacular in winning the title from Saunders, that’s another option for Canelo.” De La Hoya concluded.