By Scott Gilfoid: The January 19th fight between IBF welterweight champion Devon Alexander (24-1, 13 KO’s) and British challenger Kell Brook (29-0, 19 KOs) is heading for the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada rather than Alexander’s home city of Saint Louis, Missouri, according to espn.

It’s not all that surprising that the fight won’t be staged in St. Louis because I figured that Brook’s promoter Eddie Hearn of Matchroom Sport would make a fuss about wanting the fight to take place in a neutral venue due to the controversy of Alexander’s wins over Lucas Matthysse, Andriy Kotelnik which took place in St. Louis.

However, it doesn’t really matter where the fight takes place because Brook is going to have problems with the talented Alexander no matter where the fight is staged. Heck, they could put this fight at the Motorpoint Arena in the UK and Brook would still have major problems because Alexander is just a level above him in the talent department.

Brook is making a big step up in class in facing Alexander, as his promoters have matched him up against a variety of weak opposition his entire career. You could see the shock that Brook was in when he stepped up to fight a halfway decent contender in Carson Jones last July. Brook looked like he was in no way ready for that fight because Jones was actually fighting instead of keeping over like Brook’s previous opposition had done against him. By the end of the fight, Brook was badly hurt, his nose bleeding like a faucet and on the verge of being knocked out. The thing is there are better welterweights in the division than Jones, one of them being Alexander. Brook is in deep, deep trouble on January 19th.

Also on the card will be interim WBC light welterweight champion Lucas Matthysse and welterweight Selcuk Aydin in separate fights against opponents still to be determined. Those are two excellent fighters and if they can get some decent opponents to put in with them it should be a great card.