There was certainly no love lost between Canada’s David Lemieux and Englishman Billy Joe Saunders during their middleweight boxing encounter in Quebec on Saturday evening.The undefeated Saunders toyed with and ultimately humiliated the hometown favourite to extend his professional record to 26 wins and no losses and successfully defend his WBO Middleweight title.Prior to the fight, Saunders had called out his opponent as being “not good enough” to compete against elite opponents.And, it seems a combination of Saunders’ pre-fight trash talk, a disappointing performance in front of his home crowd, and the Briton’s mocking antics during the fight came to a head at the end of the 11th round when Lemieux aimed a post-bell glove flick towards his opponentLemieux struggled with the Briton’s evasive movement throughout the fight and failed to land any blows of significance.In fact, the Canadian landed just 67 out of 356 punches compared to Saunders’ 165 out of 430, according to CompuBox.Saunders won every round on the judges’ scorecards, and was particularly dominant in the seventh round, when a series of powerful jabs left Lemieux bloodied. The three judges scored the fight unanimously in Saunders' favour, with scores of 117-111, 118-110, and 120-108.Watch the little jab Lemieux made after the bell in the video below.

A clearly frustrated Lemieux, whose record now stands at 38 wins and four losses, said after the fight: “I was not at my best. Hats off to Billy Joe, but as of the second round, my left hand, I couldn’t use it the way I wanted to. He was on the run, so, I had a little bit of difficulty throwing my shots.

“He was running away from the first round until the end. I guess that’s his strategy to win, to run away from fighters instead of fighting. If this is the way you want to win, then hey, congratulations.”

Meanwhile, following this latest victory, could 2018 be the year that Billy Joe Saunders finally gets the big fight he so desperately craves against either Canelo Alvarez or Gennady Golovkin?