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Well now it is finally official, Marcos Maidana will take on Devon Alexander on February 25th in St. Louis, Mo as reported by Ramon Arnada at 3MoreRounds. This fight will take place at the welterweight limit even though both fighters have not fought at that weight since 2006. I like this fight in principle, but I hate the fact that the fight is taking place in St. Louis.
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Remember that Alexander "beat" both Andriy Kotelnik and Lucas Matthysse because of hometown decisions in St. Louis and Saint Charles. Saint Charles is effectively a suburb of St. Louis being about 28 miles or 45 km outside of St. Louis. In both of these fights Alexander seemed to get credit for volume even when most of his punches fell short and did not connect. Also, in both of those fights, his opponents landed the cleaner, more effective punches in most rounds, yet Alexander got credit for volume and ring generalship.
With Matthysse having similar characteristics to Marcos Maidana, you cannot like the chances that Maidana can get a decision victory in this fight. Marcos is going to need to KO Alexander if he wants to walk out of St. Louis with a signature victory. I hope that El Chino can carry his power up to the welterweight limit, and test Alexander's chin. Since Devon had to come up from the canvas in his fight against Matthysse, I hope that Maidana has the drive and power to finish the job.
I used to really like Alexander, especially after his performances against Junior Witter and Juan Urango. But in my opinion and many others, he has lost his past 3 fights badly, yet managed to escape with a 2-1 record. It is time for him to lose a big fight. In terms of what would be next for the winner of this fight, I would like to see him take on the winner of Berto-Ortiz II. I mentioned before that I like any of the possible matchups that can occur from these two fights, especially the potential rematch between Maidana and Ortiz.
As a side note, Ramon Arnada is a good friend of mine and he runs a great boxing blog over at 3MoreRounds.com. If you simply need more boxing news than you can consume here on BLH, then you should definitely check out his blog.