By Keith Idec, photos by Tom Hogan/Hoganphotos.

David Lemieux got on the scale Friday afternoon at his lowest weight in nearly six years for his fight Saturday night against Curtis Stevens.

Montreal’s Lemieux weighed in at 159 pounds, one below the middleweight limit for their 12-round fight in Verona, New York. The 28-year-old Lemieux, who has had difficulty making the middleweight limit, hasn’t weighed in that low since he was 159 pounds for his seventh-round technical knockout loss to Mexico’s Marco Antonio Rubio in April 2011.

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Stevens, who turned 32 on Friday, weighed in at 158¼ pounds, slightly more than he weighed for his last fight. Brooklyn’s Stevens weighed 157½ pounds for his 10-round, unanimous-decision defeat of James De La Rosa on November 19 at T-Mobile Arena in Las Vegas.

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The bout between Lemieux (36-3, 32 KOs) and Stevens (29-5, 21 KOs) will headline HBO’s “Boxing After Dark” doubleheader from Turning Stone Resort Casino. Lemieux, a former IBF middleweight title-holder, is a 4-1 favorite in an encounter that’ll match middleweight contenders who’ve each been stopped by Kazakh knockout artist Gennady Golovkin (36-0, 33 KOs).

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HBO’s telecast, set to start at 11 p.m. ET, will open with a 10-rounder that’ll pit Yuriorkis Gamboa (25-1, 17 KOs) against Rene Alvarado (24-7, 16 KOs).

The 35-year-old Gamboa, a 2004 Olympic gold medalist from Cuba, weighed in at 131 pounds Friday. Nicaragua’s Alvarado weighed at 130¼ pounds.

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Gamboa, a former title-holder in three divisions, hasn’t fought since December 2015. He hopes to resurrect his career after signing with Oscar De La Hoya’s Golden Boy Promotions in January.

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gamboa-alvarado (2)Keith Idec is a senior writer/columnist for BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.