By William Mackay: Marcos Maidana could wind up moving up to the welterweight division for his next fight against Devon Alexander in February of 2012. Golden Boy Promotions CEO Richard Schaefer is currently working on trying to put the fight together.

He’s already got Alexander’s management on board for the fight, so all he needs to do now is work on the particulars.

Maidana said to ESPN “He’s [Alexander] a slick, talented fighter, so you have to put as much pressure as you can against him. I like the challenge. Hopefully it can be done.”

Maidana is right about pressure being the key to beating Alexander. If you look at Alexander’s fights against Andriy Kotelnik, Timothy Bradley and Lucas Matthyse, you can see that Alexander struggled when he was pressured for long period of time. He did well in the early parts of those fights but then faded and even appeared to quit in his loss to Bradley last January.

It’s great that a fight between Alexander and Maidana is being discussed, because Maidana needs a big fight right now to get him the bigger names in the division like Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao. Those are two fighters that Maidana badly wants to fight. He’s pretty much given up trying to fight Amir Khan again after losing a 12 round decision to him last December.

Maidana had Khan badly hurt in the last three rounds of the fight, but couldn’t finish him off. Khan doesn’t want a rematch with Maidana, which is a clear sign of respect because this is a fight that boxing fans would much rather than watching Khan fight guys like Paul McCloskey and Lamont Peterson. Those aren’t fights that the fans want to see.

Alexander moved up to the welterweight division recently after winning a controversial 12 round decision against Matthysse last June. That fight told you that Alexander wasn’t going to be able to continue to stay on top of the light welterweight division unless he was going to be having every fight take place at home where he seems to be unbeatable no matter how bad he looks.