Devon Alexander vs. Aaron Martinez on October 14th on ESPN

By Boxing News - 09/13/2015 - Comments

alexander342By Scott Gilfoid: Former two division world champion Devon Alexander (26-3, 14 KOs) will be fighting next month on October 14th against 33-year-old Aron Martinez (19-4-1, 4 KOs) in a 10 round fight on Premier Boxing Champion on ESPN at the Gila River Arena in Glendale, Arizona.

#11 IBF Alexander is trying to work his way back into position for a title shot after suffering a crushing one-sided 12 round unanimous decision loss to Amir Khan last December at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

Alexander failed to attack Khan in the way that he needed to do for him to have had a chance to beat him. Chris Algieri, Lamont Peterson, Danny Garcia and Breidis Prescott created the blueprint in how to beat Khan by putting unrelenting pressure on him from start to finish. Alexander didn’t do that. He made the mistake of trying to box Khan, and he paid for it dearly by getting beaten by a one-sided 12 round decision.

Martinez, 33, was arguably robbed in his last fight in losing to former two division world champion Robert “The Ghost” Guerrero last June in losing by a 10 round split decision. Martinez knocked Guerrero down in the 4th round and had him ready to go.

Unfortunately for Martinez, Guerrero was able to escape the round without being finished off. Martinez then faded in the 2nd half of the fight, and this enabled Guerrero to take over the fight and win a close decision. Martinez still appeared to do more than enough to deserve the decision, but the more popular Guerrero was the one who wound up getting the win.

Also on the same card, IBF featherweight champion Lee Selby (21-1, 8 KOs) will be making his first defense of his IBF 126lb title against former three division world champion Fernando Montiel (54-4-2, 39 KOs) in the co-feature bout.

It’s not much of a defense for Selby, as the 36-year-old Montiel has seen better days in his career. He hasn’t fought a quality opponent in four years since losing to Nonito Donaire and Victor Terrazas in 2011.

Since then, Montiel has burned through four years of his career in facing eight weak opponents to get to the point where he’s ranked #11 with the International Boxing Federation. Montiel likely would have been ranked much higher by now if he’d been fighting talented fighters in the top 15 rather than the fodder that he’s been padding his resume with since 2011. But in boxing you get what you put into your career. If you fight lousy fighters then you don’t get ranked highly.

Montiel is a pumped up flyweight who has moved up four divisions from 112 to fight at 126. Montiel clearly doesn’t belong at featherweight, but I guess the money is better in that weight class than it is at flyweight. I don’t see him being able to do well at all against Selby in this fight. It’s not that Selby is a great fighter or anything because there are better fighters than him in the division in my view like Gary Russell Jr., Leo Santa Cruz, and Vasyl Lomachenko.



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