David Lemieux vs John Mugabi 160lbs bests?

Different weigh in rules. Lemieux is significantly bigger than Mugabi.

But if we ignore that then this is really quite a good match. Two big hitters who liked to flatten the opposition.

I think Mugabi has the toughness edge and the stamina edge. Lemieux could blow his wad if the fight went long.

But I think Lemieux has a substantial firepower edge ... he's one of the hardest hitters at 160 I've seen. Possibly hits even harder than Golovkin so Mugabi will need to be tough.

As to who is the better boxer that is up in the air. Lemieux seems to be one of those guys who realised he could just flatline guys and fell in love with his power, neglecting his boxing ... in my opinion. But his earlier versions looked to be pretty good at boxing too.

Mugabi was not that hard to hit and while he's a tough guy I wonder of David would not catch him clean sooner or later. Looking at resumes, Lemieux is ahead of Mugabi fairly comfortably.

I think I lean towards Lemieux (if we remove the weight disparity).Versions 'as is' Lemieux would mallet him, Mugabi would really feel those extra pounds.

 

I feel like everyone needs to rewatch the Hagler fight if they think Mugabi doesn’t take this.

 

If it wasn't for the Hagler fight I would have picked Lemieux by a long way.

But the truth is that Mugabi's resume hinges on a gallant KO loss to an ATG, whereas Lemieux actually has some useful scalps on his wall.

 

Yea, but his success was at the Gabe Rosado and Curtis Stevens level, whereas BJS took him to school and GGG beat the crap out him. And let’s just erase 2011. I’m pretty sure Mugabi was in the middle ground between Stevens and GGG.

 

The version of Mugabi that fought Hagler beats any version of Lemieux. Lemieux certainly had power, but, he mostly feasted on cans. Prime Lemieux was stopped by Marco Antonio Rubio.

 

Prime Mugabi knock out Canadian by 5-7 rounds.

 

Mugabi is a bit of an enigma to me, in that it's not easy to tell how much of his relatively quick decline post -Hagler was down to the beating itself, his comical lack of self discipline and loathing of training and whether or not he was just heavily overrated and far less capable than first thought. Some of the stories from Duff and Francis regarding his habits and lack of sense are so ridiculous you couldn't make it up.

It goes without saying that his high ranking was distinctly unwarranted and mostly a product of Duff's connections, but he legitimately hammered Hard Rock Green, Parker, Fletcher etc in fairly brutal fashion (though Fletcher was wartorn by that point and fresh off being clapped by Roldan). Those lads were good fighters though, legit contenders as anyone who has actually watched them would know. Not to mention Gazo as an ex 154 belt holder (limited though he was) and other acceptable peripheral types like Vampire Johnson, Gonzalez, Guiden, Hargrove, Jacquot etc. Not a murderers row by any stretch, but he ripped through them.

I'm not especially a fan of the Beast, but the idea that he has nothing of worth on his ledger while old calliper legs Lemieux does is specious and not to be taken seriously. Mugabi actually put up stern resistance deep into the fight against Hagler even if Marvin was faded, and a lot of good fighters would have crumbled under some of the shots that Hagler took. Lemieux in contrast looked woefully overmatched against Golovkin, who while a very good fighter was no spring chicken himself and not on Haglers level imo.

Mugabi in his own unpredictable straight ahead slugging way was actually, outside of frightening power, a useful counterpuncher with a reasonable sense of intuitive timing, distance, upper body movement, trap setting, angles and the like, even if plenty of his punches were loaded up like slingshots and overly wild. I wouldn't especially say the same for Lemieux, who imo had raw power but little else at world level.

As much as Mugabi was his own worst enemy and initially overhyped, he was unlucky that he had a genuine great standing in his way to exploit his shortcomings. And it didn't help that after the fight, he had months out of the ring doing f*ck all before jumping back in against a very capable (if toiling) world level fighter like Thomas, rather than a soft opponent who he could start to rebuild his self belief against. Having his orbital bone broken when Thomas thumbed him in the eye after Mugabi had made a decent start was also unlucky.

How a fight goes down between them isn't straightforward because of Lemieux's size advantage, but Mugabi was the better fighter imo.

 

Mugabi TKO.

 

Do tell, please.

Fletcher was at the very end of his career. Green was the very definition of a trialhorse by the point Mugabi met him. Gazo hadn't won in three years and never would again. Despite undeniable power (against those who couldn't move out of the way) Mugabi had every trait of being manufactured.

Mugabi's best performance, weighted by opponent and outcome, was against Hagler. I truly believe they both ruined the other in that fight, Hagler being vulnerable after an already withering career, Mugabi being the vulnerable just for his deficiencies. But while Lemieux didn't fare well against GGG, he faced and beat some decent, not great competition, in Tapia, Stevens, N'Jikam, Rosado... his quantity ledger was high against "good" competition.

Here's where I think Lemieux has the chance. He got in his range well and threw extremely compact punches. That twitch left hook of his was short and devastating. Same with his right. It typically didn't travel a foot. I think he could catch John. Wouldn't bet a dime on this fight either way but would be front seat with a gallon of popcorn. Great match-up.

 

Mugabi got stopped by Duane Thomas so ...

 

Did you watch that fight? Mugabi suffered a fluke eye injury in that fight. He was doing fine until he got thumbed in the eye and it fractured his eye socket. And, Thomas was a pretty good fighter anyway. Much better than Rubio. Lemieux flat out quit in that fight. He was a frontrunner, clear and simple. When the going got tough for him, he folded. And, I was really pulling for Lemieux to be good. I really enjoyed watching him decimate C level fighters on the way up, and hoped for more from him. But, nothing in his run compared to Mugabi's run up to, and, including the Hagler fight. He decimated some solid B+ fighters, and gave one of the top 3 middleweights of all time a tough fight. Lemieux barely made an aging GGG step out of second gear.

 

"Much better than Rubio" I think is debatable at best. Rubio had a long run with a lot of wins.

 

I went to Youngstown to watch Rubio fight Kelly Pavlik live about a year before he fought Lemieux. He was a C+ grade fighter at best.

 

And yet he beat Lemieux, Baldomir, Spada etc in his 68 fight career. I guess we disagree on what a C level fighter is.