Dan Rafael of espn.com is reporting that Canadian based Middleweights David Lemieux will take on Joachim Alcine on December 10th in Montreal.
“We are finalizing the paperwork and we are supposed to have a press conference on Monday,” said Lemieux’s promoter Yvon Michel, adding that the bout will be available on pay-per-view in Quebec. “It’s not a fight that will draw 15,000, but this is a big local rivalry and we should draw around 5,000.”
“For Lemieux, he needs to prove he made a good move to change trainers,” Michel said. “He has to prove what happened against Rubio was just an accident in his career and that he has grown and learned from that. He will definitely want to show it against Alcine.”
“I let him go because I didn’t want him to fight in December,” Lemieux’s former trainer Russ Anber told ESPN.com last week following their split. “What I wanted from him was a four-month commitment to boxing. Train, get his weight down, do a lot of conditioning and then go to a training camp. We spent the last five months trying to get him to commit to training. I realized I’m banging my head against the wall. I want him to see what you need to do to be an elite middleweight, to prepare for a career, not just one fight, and we weren’t going to see eye to eye.
“We just don’t see eye to eye on the way he should be preparing for fights. Instead of him being miserable in the gym, and for my mental sanity, it’s better to go separate ways than butt heads. Marc has my blessing. He trains his fighters in my gym. So this split with David is not a hateful split or about money. It’s just we are on a different philosophical plane on what it takes to succeed in the elite world of boxing.
“Marc (Ramsay) keeps telling me everything that he asks David to do he has done with intensity and no complaint at all, that he is very dedicated and focused,” Michel said. “Maybe David and Russ, that relationship had just run its course. I know David has a lot of talent, charisma and power. He has all the tools to succeed.”
“It’s a crossroads fight, no question about it,” Said Alcine’s promoter Lou DiBella. “Lemieux is coming off the big loss and Alcine is at the stage of his career where he has to see if he can still compete. If he can pull off an upset he’s a star again in Canada and if he can’t, he can’t. It’s a fight he wanted and I was able to get him a fair purse. For the Canadian audience this is a very meaningful fight.”
