Devon Alexander retains title
Devon Alexander endured a difficult time in his home state of Missouri on Saturday night, coming through a stiff test from challenger Andrei Kotelnik to retain his WBC and IBF light-welterweight belts with a unanimous decision win.
There was some questionable scoring from the judges, 116-112 across the board that smacked of home-town bias. The result didn’t justify the impact the resilient Ukrainian made on the contest and in many ways Alexander can consider himself to be lucky to come away with such a comfortable win.
It was a match-up that was always going to prove industrial. Most fight fans would have known what to expect, Alexander is a smooth and skilled fighter while Kotelnik is a scrapper with a solid chin, and this bout was always going the distance. As many expected Alexander tried to match the Ukrainian by opting for a stick and jab style rather than his normal more fluid technique.
However this change of pace didn’t suit Alexander and the southpaw didn’t look the same fighter as the one that took apart Juan Urango in March. The champion was lacking the flow and dexterity he has previously shown and in contrast Kotelnik looked determined and difficult, dealing with Alexander’s awkwardness with his own tricky brand of fighting.
It was the American who came out the stronger though and dug himself in the trenches in the opening few rounds, landing more shots and becoming the aggressor. In fact Kotelnik’s slow start in comparison probably cost him the fight as the first four rounds all went to Alexander who was taking the fight to the contender and dictating the pace, landing much more shots.
In the fifth however Kotelnik managed to reassert himself back in the fight, landing three tough right hander’s, taking his first round of the night in the process.
The middle rounds were scrappy with Kotelnik taking over the running of the show and forcing his jab more. Alexander tried to counter but the midsection of this fight was all Kotelnik's, a point that was forced home when the Ukrainian opened up a ghoulish cut above the right eye of Alexander in the tenth.
The champion had fallen into the trap of trying to out iron the tough Kotelnik, and was spurred back to boxing by his corner. The 11th and 12th rounds were much tighter; Alexander got his jab going strong and landing some nice combinations and was the busier of the two fighters, enough to take the victory.
The judges were clear cut in their decision but Kotelnik and his corner were incensed, feeling the Ukrainian ringsmanship was overlooked. Alexander put in a bookend performance which was enough to take the spoils, however Kotelnik proved a tricky and awkward customer and the champion can count himself lucky to get such a lopsided score as Kotelnik did enough in the middle to make it a much closer fight than many expected.
Alexander wasn’t at his skilful best, getting drawn into a scrap more times than he would have liked. He recognised that he would more than likely have to be going for the full 12 rounds and tried to mix it with Kotelnik in a gritty contest.
Following this result Alexander called out Timothy Bradley Jnr and it would be great to see a super-fight between the duo as talk turns to who the best light-welterweight is with Amir Khan and Marcos Maidana the other two big names of the division.
On this showing Alexander will need to improve before he takes on Bradley. He may bill himself as “Alexander the Great”, but he was only Alexander the average against Kotelnik.
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