By Dan Ambrose: This Saturday night, IBF/WBC light welterweight champion Devon Alexander (20-0, 13 KO’s) will be defending his two titles against former World Boxing Association light welterweight champion Andriy Kotelnik (31-3, 13 KO’s) at the Scottrade Center, in Saint Louis, Missouri. Alexander, only 23, needs this fight to line him up for much bigger paying bout against WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley in January.

Both the Kotelnik and the Bradley fights will be shown on HBO, and if Alexander is successful, he will find himself getting much bigger paydays than he’s been getting in the past. While Alexander and Bradley are squaring off early next year, presumably WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan will finally be getting around to fighting WBA light welterweight interim champion Marcos Maidana, if Khan is able to get by his next opponent in December. Khan wants to fight Juan Manuel Marquez, and if he gets his wish, Khan may find himself in over his head in that fight.

Alexander has a tough fight this Saturday with the 32-year-old Kotelnik. This is a fighter that fought Maidana and beat him by a controversial 12 round split decision last year. And although many people think that Kotelnik should have lost the fight, he still fought well enough to make the fight very close at the end. Kotelnik showed that he could take Maidana’s best shots for 12 rounds, and did an excellent job of keeping Maidana on the outside, where he was much more manageable.

However, against Alexander, Kotelnik is going to have problems dealing with his powerful jab and fast hands. Alexander punches very fast and hard, and his southpaw stance makes him even harder to deal with. Kotelnik has an advantage in that he doesn’t like to fight in close and he also doesn’t make silly mistakes like a lot of fighters do when they fight Alexander. Unlike Juan Urango, who was stopped by Alexander in the 8th round in March due to his often reckless attacks.

Kotelnik will be fighting much more in control, using his jab and staying away from Alexander’s power shots. Alexander is going to have to be the one doing the attacking, because Kotelnik won’t be coming after him the way that most of his opponents have done. However, Kotelnik is vulnerable to fast shots, as was seen in his lopsided 12 round decision loss to Amir Khan last year in July.

What Kotelnik needed in that fight, more than anything, was power on his shots. If he had decent power, he would have had an excellent chance of knocking Khan out or at least making him fight more cautiously.

Look for Alexander to dominate Kotelnik much more than Khan did and end up stopping him before the 10th. It will still be a fairly tough fight because Kotelnik has an excellent jab, and he’ll be landing it often as Alexander takes chances trying to take him out.