By Jim Dower: Former IBF/WBC light welterweight champion Devon Alexander (23-1 13 Ko’s) looked good in beating a powerful but limited Marcos Maidana (31-3, 28 KO’s) by a lopsided 10 round unanimous decision on Saturday night at the Scottrade Center in Saint Louis, Missouri. The final judges’ scores were 100-90, 100-90, and 99-91.

Maidana, 28, fought his best in the first two rounds, as he was able to land some big shots, although he kept walking into right hand jabs and straight lefts as well as hooks from Alexander. After the second round, the fight really got out of hand with Alexander picking Maidana apart and clinching him constantly to prevent Maidana from getting off his shots.

Referee Steve Smoger gave Alexander a lot of warnings to stop clinching but he continued to use this technique with great effectiveness throughout the fight, perhaps knowing that Smoger isn’t the type of referee to take points away from fighters.

In the 3rd round, Alexander was cut over his right eye by a shot from Maidana. It looked like at the time the cut would eventually cause the fight to be stopped. However, Alexander’s corner did a great job of stopping the bleeding in between rounds and he was able to continue dominating the fight from then on.

Alexander hurt Maidana a number of times in the fight from the 6th round, and Maidana just looked completely out of his class in this fight. He didn’t have the hand speed, the foot speed, the defense or the power needed to hurt Alexander and make the fight competitive. Maidana looked kind of fat around the middle and in hindsight, he probably made a mistake by agreeing to move up in weight from 140 to take this fight at 147. It was the first fight for Alexander at welterweight, but he carried the weight a lot better than Maidana. The weight wasn’t why Maidana lost, though, because he’d likely have gotten easily beaten even if the fight was held at 140. It just seemed like Alexander had Maidana’s number, and the clinching sure helped nullify Maidana’s offense.

The good thing about this fight is Alexander got the win and showed that he’s a lot better fighter than he was in beating Andriy Kotelnik and Lucas Matthysse by controversial decisions. However, the bad thing is that HBO will now likely continue to shove Alexander down the throats of boxing fans by showing his future fights on their network. I think it’s great that Alexander won the fight over Maidana, but I don’t like Alexander’s style of fighting with all the clinching and I’d rather HBO look for other more exciting fighters to show than him. Watching a guy clinching seven times or more per round is really boring and I think HBO can do better than this.

After the fight, Alexander said “We went back to the drawing board and moved up in weight and fixed the problem,” Alexander said. “I want to continue to learn at 147.”

Maidana said this: “I was slower,” he said. “He was very fast and complicated.”