By Rick Reeno

Canadian star David Lemieux (34-3, 31KOs) will likely return to the ring in the early part of 2016, according to his longtime manager Camille Estephan of Eye of The Tiger Management.

"He's taking some time off. Hopefully he will fight sometime in March or April," Estephan told BoxingScene.com. "[Lemieux] can still beat anybody at middleweight, I'm confident. We want the top guys, nothing has changed. We still want that. We're confident David has that [ability to beat the top guys]."

Considering where he was a year ago, Lemieux had a pretty big year.

He achieved his dream of becoming a world champion by winning a twelve round unanimous decision over Hassan N'Dam to capture the vacant IBF title in June. He came back in October, before a sold out Madison Square Garden in New York City, and faced WBA/IBO champion Gennady "GGG" Golovkin (34-0, 31KOs) in the main event of an HBO Pay-Per-View.

Lemieux, who went down in the fifth round from a hard shot to the body, was eventually stopped in the eight.

When Lemieux went down in the fifth, the referee did not step in there quick enough and Golovkin nailed Lemieux while he was down. Estaphan says his fighter never fully recovered from those two big shots.

"We lost that fight. Golovkin looked great. David, he tried to do what he wanted to do and bully Golovkin, but that wasn't going to work because [Golovkin's] jab was good. The coach told him to put pressure, don't open up and let's go to the later rounds - but he got caught with a good body shot and went down, and then took a good punch with his knee down [on the mat]. That took a lot out of him. He has heart and kept going. He wasn't going to lay down and fake sh*t [to get Golovkin disqualified]. He has too much respect for Golovkin and boxing to do that. But it took a lot out of him."

"He wasn't going to win on points, that was obvious to us. We wanted to take him to rounds eleven or twelve and knock him out, but we never got a chance to get there. The referee stopped the fight. I'm not saying that he shouldn't have stopped it, but we didn't get to do what we want to and go [to the late rounds]."

Lemieux was offered the opportunity to have a quick turnaround by facing Curtis Stevens (27-5, 20KOs) on January 30th as the HBO televised co-feature to Sergey Kovalev-Jean Pascal II at the Bell Centre in Montreal.

Estephan turned that offer down. While many would assume he turned Stevens down because it may have been too soon for Lemieux to return - Estaphen makes it clear that wasn't the reason for his decision.

"It's not about [it being too soon]. Why would [Lemieux] be a co-main event? He's the biggest attraction in Montreal right now. Nobody sells more than him. I would never put him on as a co-feature. Kovalev can't sell 20% of what he sells," Estephan said.

He's open to entertaining the possibility of Lemieux fighting Stevens - as a headliner with their own HBO date.