By Dan Ambrose: Marcos Maidana (31-3, 28 KO’s) gave it a shot at moving up in weight to fight at welterweight, but he had little luck in losing a one-sided 10 round unanimous decision to former IBF/WBC light welterweight champion Devon Alexander (23-1, 13 KO’s) last Saturday night at the Scottrade Center in Saint Louis, Missouri.

It wasn’t even a close fight, as Maidana took a lot of punishment from the faster and better skilled 25-year-old Alexander. The judges’ scored it 100-90, 100-90 and 99-81. Those are some awfully lopsided scores and it showed how one-sided the fight was. In fairness to Maidana, Alexander probably should have lost two or three points for excessive holding in the fight due to his habit of clinching over 10 times a round.

When you get a fighter that’s clinching that often, it really gets in the way of the fight and essentially is away of keeping the other from letting his hands go. I don’t blame Alexander for wanting to hold, because Maidana is a huge puncher and if Alexander hadn’t been holding, he would have taken a lot of hard shots and might have been in the position where he would have had to quit again. But the blame in this case should be on referee Steve Smoger, who did a horrible job of keeping Alexander from clinching.

I know he’s one of those hands of referees but when you got a guy like Alexander grabbing Maidana each time he gets in range, you have to warn two or three times and then start taking off points. That didn’t happen in this fight. We saw Smoger telling Alexander to stop holding, but then there was nothing after that. Alexander continued to clinch and it was left at that. That’s not the way it should have been. I would have liked to have seen what Maidana could have done had he not been grabbed 10+ times per round.

I still think Maidana would have lost the fight even if Smoger had policed up Alexander’s constant clinching – if that were possible – because Alexander was moving too well and had a huge advantage in hand speed over Maidana. It would have been a lot more exciting fight without the clinching, though. That just really, really took off from the fight and made Alexander’s win a little less than it would have been. If Alexander wanted to shine like WBO super featherweight champion Adrien Broner did in beating Eloy Perez by a 4th round TKO, then Alexander would have accomplished that if he could have clinched like eight less times per round. Maybe two clinches per round would have been good, but more than 10, was far too many and in my view Smoger should have taken off as many points as possible to get Alexander to stop grabbing.