By Michael Collins: Devon Alexander (22-1, 13 KO’s) will have all the advantages he needs to beat Marcos Maidana (31-2, 28 KO’s) next month with Alexander’s hometown and speed advantage in their fight on February 25th at the Scottrade Center in Saint Louis, Missouri.
Either one of those advantages for the 24-year-old Alexander will be enough in itself for him to beat the 28-year-old Maidana but taken as a whole, Maidana has very little chance of winning this fight unless he can score a knockout. That’s not likely to happen in this fight because Alexander is quick and has a good chin.
Maidana is going to get a nice payday for this fight due to the large gate attendance that is expected. Maidana obviously didn’t take the fight for that reason alone. He likely saw how Alexander buckled under the pressure from Timothy Bradley in their fight last year in January and appeared to quit in the 10th round when he got head-butted.
It looked as if Alexander was willing to take his chances with the scorecards by not continuing, because at the time the fight was halted, Alexander had been fading for at least two solid rounds and he didn’t look as if he was going to get his second wind. Maidana is at least as good a pressure fighter as Bradley with better power in either hand.
However, he’s not as quick as Bradley and that could be a big problem if he wants to be competitive with Alexander. Maidana is going to have to count on Alexander standing in front of him if he’s to do anything in this fight. Alexander does stand and trade on the inside, but I don’t know that he’ll be making that mistake in this fight. He does that against guys that don’t have a good inside game. Maidana does fight really well in close when he’s not being held like he was in his loss to Amir Khan in 2010.