Boxing News – Witter vs. Alexander Pushed Back to August; Lee vs. Fedotovs on June 20th

By Jason Kim: Former World Boxing Council light welterweight champion Junior Witter (37-2-2, 22 KOs) will have to wait a little longer before he gets a shot at recapturing his WBC title because his opponent Devon Alexander won’t be ready to go by the originally scheduled date of July 11th for the bout. Instead, the fight is likely to be pushed back to August 1st.

Witter, ranked number #3 in the WBC, had hoped to challenge Timothy Bradley for the belt, but Bradley vacated the title rather than defend it against the little known weak punching Alexander. Witter was defeated by Bradley by a close 12 round decision in May 2008. Witter has since bounced back from that defeat with a nice 3rd round knockout win over Victor Hugo Castro in November 2008.

Andy Lee to Fight on Chagaev-Klitschko Undercard on June 20th

Once beaten middleweight Andy Lee (17-1, 13 KOs) will be getting a chance to show his stuff on the undercard of the IBF/WBO heavyweight match between champion Wladimir Klitschko vs. Ruslan Chagaev on June 20th against Latvian Olegs Fedotovs (10-5, 6 KOs) at the Veltins Arena, in Gelsenkirchen, Germany.

Though Lee is getting a plumb venue to show what he has, the low quality of his opponent suggests that Lee, 25, is taking a backwards step in taking this fight. It’s hard not to see why, because Lee hasn’t looked good in ages, and has struggled since being beaten by Brian Vera in a 7th round stoppage last year in March 2008.

Vera, a hard puncher but not exactly a world beater, wore Lee down with right hands and staggered him in the 7th, causing the stoppage. Lee came back from that defeat to beat journeyman Willie Gibbs by a 10th round stoppage in July last year.

However, once again Lee has another bad performance in his recently fight with German Alexander Sipos, who gave Lee all kinds of problems and rocked him a couple of times in the bout with hard shots. Just like in the fight with Vera, Lee tired out in the later rounds and his legs looked like two wet noodles in rounds eight through ten.

Fedotovs has lost four out of his last 10 fights, so this should be an easy fight for Lee. It’s hard to see what Lee will learn from this, because he needs to have an opponent that has a good chin that can stick around long enough for Lee to work on his stamina and defense, both of which need a tremendous amount of work.

Offensively, Lee looks good and shows excellent power, but he starts to fade too quickly in his fights and gets hit way too much for his own good. If he had the stamina and chin of someone like Kelly Pavlik then it wouldn’t be such a big deal but clearly he doesn’t judging from Lee’s fights against Vera and Sipos.

Perhaps a better opponent for Lee to fight on June 20th is Vera, because at least Lee would be able to get a good gauge as to whether he’s partially fixed the problems that have been plaguing him lately with his stamina and chin.

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