By Scott Gilfoid: This Saturday night, IBF welterweight champion Devon Alexander (24-1, 13 KO’s) will be defending his title against replacement opponent #4 IBF Lee Purdy (20-3-1, 13 KO’s) at the Boardwalk Hall in Atlantic City, New Jersey.
Purdy, 25, is replacing the unbeaten #1 IBF Kell Brook, who suffered one too many injuries to his lower extremities causing him to lose out on the opportunity to get the fight.
They finally had to replace Brook with Purdy in order to avoid Alexander using up an entire year of his career waiting for Brook to stop getting injured in training camp. Who honestly knows how long Alexander would have had to wait before he finally got Brook in the ring.
The funny thing is Brook had previously had zero problems in training camps when he was facing poor opposition for 8 years. It was only when Brook was about to face his first quality opponent in Alexander that he suffering foot and ankle injuries.
Maybe the pressure was too much and his body started breaking down under it. Whatever the case, Purdy is the guy that will be stepping inside the ring with Alexander on Saturday night and it’s going to be interesting to see what Purdy’s got.
In his last fight last March, Purdy had weight problems and looked like a middleweight in facing the slender journeyman Cosme Rivera. Purdy got a 9th round stoppage but he was far from impressive in that fight. In fact, I’d say Purdy looked plain awful.
Rivera was able to hit him at will, and if he had even a slight amount of power I think he would have knocked the out of shape Purdy out. I mean, I know this wasn’t Purdy at his best, but come on, Man, he looked like someone that didn’t belong in the top 5 rankings.
I expect Purdy’s ranking to be corrected after this Saturday night with him getting easily beaten and that in turn causing the International Boxing Federation to wake up and realize they made a huge mistake in ranking Purdy at #4. I don’t see Purdy as a top 15 or even a top 20 contender. He’s more like top 100.
There are no solid wins on Purdy’s resume, but there some nice losses to Colin Lynes and Denton Vassell. Purdy really got schooled by Vassell and I was impressed with Vassell a heck of a lot more than I was Purdy.
Alexander was looking forward to the fight with Brook, and it’s no doubt a huge disappointment for him to be facing Purdy instead. But nevertheless, Alexander’s a professional and he’ll do what he has to do to get the win and move on from there.
This is going to be Alexander’s first title defense of his IBF strap that he captured last October with a 12 round unanimous decision over the hard hitting former IBF welterweight champion Randall Bailey in Brooklyn. New York. Alexander did a great job of nullifying Bailey’s power in order to get the win.
I expect Alexander to totally school Purdy and knock him out by the 8th round. Alexander isn’t known for his power, but he can hard when he loads up on his shots. Purdy is so far out of his class in this fight that it’s not even funny.
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