Floyd Mayweather Jr. vs. Devon Alexander on May 4th – Breaking News!

By Boxing News - 02/05/2013 - Comments

floyd6By Chris Williams: Floyd Mayweather Jr. (43-0, 26 KO’s) says that negotiations for a unification fight against IBF welterweight champion Devon Alexander (24-1, 13 KO’s) are almost done for Mayweather’s May 4th pay per view date on HBO at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Mayweather said on his twitter just minutes ago “The negotiations for my fight are almost done. The front runner is IBF champion Devon Alexander. I’d be a unification bout at welterweight.”

Alexander recently pulled out of his scheduled February 23rd title defense against unbeaten #1 IBF Kell Brook due to a strained right biceps muscle, but now you have to wonder whether the injury was legit. They were talking six weeks for the injury to be healed.

The injury, if it’s real, will likely be healed by May 4th, but you don’t like to see Mayweather choosing a fighter that’s got an injury that may potentially flare up and cause his fight to be postponed or cancelled. Of course if the injury is bogus, then there’s no problem.

It was thought that Mayweather would be fighting WBC interim welterweight champion Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero on this date because Guerrero is a Mexican American, and Mayweather has selected the Mexican holiday Cinco de Mayo to fight on. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for Mayweather to fight Alexander on that date, and I kind of wonder about the logic in that decision. There must have been something about Guerrero’s southpaw style that Mayweather didn’t like.

It could be that Mayweather saw Guerrero’s success against the shoulder roll defense that Andre Berto was using and decided that it might be best to fight Alexander, who doesn’t throw nearly as many punches as Guerrero typically does. Alexander is a southpaw like Guerrero, but he doesn’t overwhelm you with 80 to 100 punches thrown per round the way that Guerero does. That would have been a harder fight for Mayweather because he would have had to either knock Guerrero out or use his feet a lot more to keep from taking a lot of shots.

This is bad news for Kell Brook, I imagine, because he’ll have to wait a lot longer before he finally gets a title shot, and if Mayweather wins the IBF title, he’ll likely end up having to wait until Mayweather vacates the strap before he’ll get a shot at the title because Mayweather won’t waste a title defense against a fighter that most American boxing fans have never heard of or seen before.



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