By Dan Ambrose: Unbeaten IBF/WBC light welterweight champion Devon Alexander (20-0, 13 KO’s) has finally found an opponent for his next fight and will be facing former World Boxing Association light welterweight champion Andriy Kotelnik (31-3-1, 13 KO’s) on August 7th in Alexander’s home city of Saint Louis, Missouri. It’s kind of an anti-climatic choice for Alexander, as he’s been trying to get fights against WBO light welterweight champion Timothy Bradley and WBA light welterweight interim champion Marcos Maidana. Neither fighter showed much interest in fighting the 23-year-old Alexander, although not because they were afraid of him.

Kotelnik is still perhaps the next best opponent other than WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan, who isn’t ready to face Alexander at this time. The problem for the 32-year-old Kotelnik is he’s coming off a one-sided loss to Khan a year ago in July, and many people feel that Kotelnik should have lost his last two fights, because he won controversial 12 round split decision over Maidana last year in February, in a fight that took place in Kotelnik’s adopted country of Germany.

Having seen that fight, I had Maidana winning it by at least two rounds, possibly more. But whatever the case, Kotelnik hasn’t looked good in awhile, so Alexander is getting a good fighter but not likely won that will really challenge him. I think Kotelnik will help Alexander because he can give him some rounds and give him some badly needed experience against a European fighter that mostly likes to jab and do little else. Alexander should be able to solve Kotelnik’s style without any problems but he’s going to have to get past his jab to land shots.

Kotelnik’s jab is first rate. Unfortunately, he doesn’t have anything else to go along with it and is completely dependent on that as his main offensive weapon. What Kotelnik has going for him is his excellent chin and his tendency to stay out of the way of big exchanges. He doesn’t like to mix it up and will shoot a jab when his opponents are trying to come in throwing bombs. Most of his fights tend to be boring jab-fests and are painful to watch without a couple of strong cups of coffee.

Alexander is coming off of two consecutive impressive stoppage wins over Junior Witter and Juan Urango. It’s hard to say whether Alexander is as good as he appeared in those fights, because the 36-year-old Witter looked badly deteriorated and appeared over-the-hill compared to his form earlier in his career in the early 2000s. Urango just looked slow and pretty much the same fighter that was dominated by Ricky Hatton three years ago in 2007.

It will take more than those wins to show whether Alexander is the real deal or just another good but not great champion. Alexander isn’t being helped right now that none of the top fighters – Khan, Maidana and Bradley – are interested in fighting him at the moment. They will soon enough, but for the time being Alexander will have to settle for beating up on Kotelnik.