Alexander vs. Maidana: Devon to overwhelm Marcos with punches on 2/25

By Boxing News - 12/30/2011 - Comments

Image: Alexander vs. Maidana: Devon to overwhelm Marcos with punches on 2/25By Dan Ambrose: Marcos Maidana (31-2, 28 KO’s) still doesn’t know what he’s got himself into in facing Devon Alexander (22-1, 13 KO’s) on February 25th at the Scottrade Center in Saint Louis, Missouri.

This is a really bad match-up for the 28-year-old Maidana. Alexander has the speed advantage, hometown advantage and is a southpaw to boot. Alexander’s main problems in his last three fights were his struggles making the 140 pound weight limit for the light welterweight division. But now that he’s moved up to 147lbs, Alexander is strong and no longer weakened from the ordeal of making weight.

Alexander plans on using a high workrate to overwhelm the slower Maidana and pound out either a wide decision or a stoppage. It’s probably not realistic that Alexander will be able to stop Maidana, as he’s got a good chin and you open yourself if you try and take him out. But Alexander could get a stoppage if he can bust up Maidana or cause some swelling from an accumulation of punches.

This is a fight where Maidana is facing an even better fighter than his losses to Andriy Kotelnik and Amir Khan. Alexander is almost as fast as Khan, but has much sounder defensive skills and doesn’t need to run around the ring in order to survive.

Alexander will give Maidana all he can handle just using minimal movement.
Maidana looked terrible in his fights against Khan and Erik Morales in the last year. Khan took advantage of Maidana’s lack of foot and hand speed to build up a huge insurmountable lead and then held in the last three rounds when he ran out of gas and got briefly hurt in the 10th.

Morales should have gotten the decision against a very tired Maidana last April. I thought that was a really bad decision that was handed down. Maidana was outworked by a 35-year-old Morales and looked even older than he did.



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