By Sean McDaniel: In more of a sign that Marcos Maidana is the most popular fighter in the light welterweight division, recently spurned IBF/WBC light welterweight champion Devon Alexander (20-0, 13 KO’s) wants to go after former World Boxing Association light welterweight champion Andriy Kotelnik (31-3-1, 13 KO’s) for his next fight. The 32-year-old Kotelnik, a 2000 Olympian for Ukraine, is the only fighter ever to beat the hard-hitting Maidana, beating him by a questionable 12 round split decision a year ago in February. The fight took place in Germany, where Kotelnik now fights and for a lot of people, they felt that Maidana had done enough to get the win.

The fight was very close, however, because Kotelnik chose to rarely engage Maidana and stayed on the outside flicking his powerful jab all night long. Maidana landed the harder shots and took over – or appeared to – the fight in the past six rounds to badly punish Kotelnik with hard punches to the head and body. Kotelnik getting the decision really wasn’t all that surprising, through, because it’s often difficult for visiting fighters to win decisions, even in one-sided fights. In this case, it was a fairly close fight with Maidana looking to me to have won the fight by an 8-4 margin.

Alexander was recently working on fighting Maidana next. However, Maidana’s people did an about face and chose instead to fight WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley in a fight that will be shown on HBO in June. You can’t blame Maidana for choosing Bradley, because for one HBO was very interested in having the fight put together with the two fighters.

Bradley is considered by many people to be the best fighter in the light welterweight division. It’s a win-win situation for Maidana no matter what happens in the fight. A fight against a skilled and popular fighter like Bradley is a feather in the cap for Maidana, because he can learn a lot from that fight. Bradley has tools to make Maidana a better fighter by the time it ends. There’s no telling who will that fight, but it’s probably the best one that can be put together right now in the division.

In an interview of Kevin Cunningham, the trainer of Alexander, by Greg Leon of Boxing Talk, Cunningham says “Since Devon had the Marcos Maidana fight taken away from him, we want the guy who beat Maidana, the former champion Kotelnik…Maidana lost to the guy. Let’s see what Devon does to him.”

The fight hardly needs to be made, because besides the questionable nature of Kotelnik’s win over Maidana, Kotelnik was beaten by Amir Khan last July in a lopsided 12 round decision loss. Khan used movement, jabs and fast combinations to beat Kotelnik at his own game. Kotelnik is a pure boxer, but not good at moving. Khan simply added movement to his game and easily beat him. Khan, if his chin was good enough, might have been able to beat Kotelnik by going after him the way that Maidana did, but instead he followed his trainer Freddie Roach’s instructions and boxed Kotelnik for 12 rounds.