By Dan Ambrose: WBA light welterweight champion Marcos Maidana (31-3, 28 KO’s) is vowing to come back stronger after losing by a lopsided 10 round unanimous decision to former IBF/WBC light welterweight champion Devon Alexander (23-1, 13 KO’s) on February 25th in Saint Louis, Missouri.

Maidana looked slightly fat in moving up to 147lbs for the fight and lost by the scores of 100-90, 99-91 and 100-90. Alexander was moving up in weight as well, but he looked a lot stronger at the weight. The weight that Alexander put on for the fight appeared to be pure muscle, as he looked a lot bigger than he had in his previous fights at 140.

Maidana said this on his twitter page “I trained almost 90 days for this fight but it didn’t work. I’ll be back soon to be stronger to defend my WBA super lightweight title…I feel better now. After having some rest I’ll come back stronger.”

Maidana is a much better fighter at 140 compared to 147. His power is much more lethal at 140, and he has the ability to run over a certain amount of contenders on strength alone. He couldn’t do that against Alexander, who looked to have a weight advantage over him.

One real negative that came out of the Alexander loss for Maidana is that it kind of created a blueprint in how to beat Maidana. Alexander showed that Maidana is vulnerable if you get off one or two shots first and then collapse forward to grab him in a clinch so that he can’t return fire. Unless a referee is working that prevents constantly clinching in this manner, which is doubtful, then Maidana can be beaten in this manner. It’s the same approach that Shane Mosley used in beating Antonio Margarito in 2009 by hitting once and immediately clinching to smother Margarito.

Alexander used the same approach against Maidana with good results. It’s likely that Maidana will see his future opponents using this same style. It won’t be a big deal if a referee is working that will prevent the clinching, but most referees do next to nothing to prevent a fighter from holding on the entire fight. It’s sad but very true. Excessive clinching is now allowed in boxing and it puts a lot of pressure on the fighter who finds himself getting grabbed all the time to either change his game or else finding himself having his career go down the drain due to an inability to adapt.

Maidana needs to learn how to combat clinchers by throwing punches while being held onto. He’s got to accept that pretty much everyone he faces from now on will be looking to grab him at every opportunity unless an assertive referee is working the fight. Unfortunately, good referees are rare nowadays. A lot of them just hang around and give warnings when seeing fouls like low blows and clinching but still not taking points off. It sets it up so that the fighters that are doing the fouling have it pretty easy.