By Jason Kim: Devon Alexander (23-1, 13 KO’s) made a seamless transition into the welterweight division by beating light welterweight Marcos Maidana (31-3, 28 KO’s) by a decisive 10 round unanimous decision in front of a packed house will tons of Alexander fans at the Scottrade Center, in Saint Louis, Missouri. I had Alexander winning every round of the fight, and scored it 100-90. The judges saw it my way scoring the fight 100-90, 100-90 and 99-91.
Maidana shouldn’t have ever moved up from the light welterweight division because he just looked fat and slow at 147. At 140, Maidana is slow but at least he’s not fat like he was tonight. That’s not why he lost the fight, of course. Maidana was beaten because he was too slow and lacked the stamina and punching assortment to beat Alexander.
Maidana found himself tied up on the inside by Alexander, who is probably no better an inside fighter than Amir Khan. The difference in this fight compared to Khan’s recent loss to Lamont Peterson, is that the referee was willing to let Alexander get away with things, in particular the endless clinching. It was an ugly fight because of that but there’s no doubt Alexander did what he had to do in order to win it.
Maidana seemed to run out of gas as early as the 5th, as he seemed to plod in the second half of the fight and frequently had to take big gulps of air. He didn’t look fit for a fast pace and the extra weight he put on for the fight appeared to be flab around his midsection.
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Broner stops Perez
In easily the best fight of the night, unbeaten World Boxing Organization (WBO) super featherweight champion Adrien Broner (23-0, 19 KO’s) put in a pretty fair imitation of Floyd Mayweather Jr. with a 4th round TKO win over previously unbeaten Eloy Perez (23-1-2, 7 KO’s) in a non-competitive fight. Broner picked Perez clean, landing right hand pot shots, left hooks and big uppercuts all throughout the fight. Perez had decent hand speed, but he couldn’t deal with the counter-punching from Broner. Each time Perez would connect with something, Broner would immediately hit him with a counter shot. Most of the time, Broner was able to connect with big shots while Perez was coming in and that would stop him dead in his tracks.
Without any power to speak of in this fight, Perez was at the mercy of Broner. His hand speed wasn’t enough for Perez to compete with the hard hitting counter punching Broner and it was clear that the fight wasn’t going to go the full 12 rounds even early on in the first round.
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Deontay Wilder TKO 4 Marlon Hayes
Big 6’7″ heavyweight prospect Deontay Wilder (21-0, 21 KO’s) continued to open eyes with his impressive 4th round TKO win over Marlon Hayes (23-11, 11 KO’s). Wilder, 26, used his long jab effectively to line the 40-year-old Hayes up for a two big right hands in the 4th that had Hayes staggering around and barely able to keep standing. He was somehow able to clinch his way out of the round. After the round end, the referee stopped the fight because of how badly hurt Hayes was. There is no way he could have come out for the 5th and lasted long under the huge right hand bombs that Wilder was hitting him with. Wilder hits too hard and with Hayes likely to come out still groggy from the right hands that he had eaten in the last round, it’s highly likely that Wilder would have poleaxed Hayes and sent him down with a single shot.
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Bogere stops Rivera
Undefeated light welterweight prospect Sharif Bogere (22-0, 14 KO’s) stopped Sergio Rivera (25-9-2, 16 KO’s) in the 3rd round. The fight was halted after the 3rd round due to Rivera having taken too many head shots. He wasn’t competitive and was getting hit with massive amounts of punches from the high volume punching Bogere.
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In other fights on the card:
Christopher Pearson TKO 1 Jeremy Wood
Tyrone Chatman UD 4 Marlon Smith
Jose Ponce TKO 1 Jonathan Brown
Eddie Gomez UD 6 David Lopez
Keith Thurman TKO 1 Chris Fernandez
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