Not all great fighters are heavyweights

I believe I recently referred to one of the best fighters in the world as "Derrick Alexander." Of course, the No. 7 position on my pound-for-pound list is held by "Devon" Alexander.

No mea culpas here. The fault, dear Yorrick, belongs to the world’s greatest self-promoter, Dan (sic) King, who has done another miserable job of evaluating his own assets.

Alexander the Great – and I take it on faith that his nickname is based on more than a meager sample of his talents – shows up again next Saturday in his home town of St. Louis and this time it is Cory Spinks who is on the undercard.

Alexander is almost a prohibitive favorite over former 140-pound titlist Andriy Kotelnik, a Ukrainian, in a pretty good Showtime double-header.

The undefeated Tavoris Cloud defends his light-heavyweight belt against the Gentleman Warrior, or Road Warrior, but certainly Old Warrior, in 41-year-old Glen Johnson. There is a good chance for an upset here, but very little in the main event.

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Alexander is the latest in the long line of King oversights. The 23-year-old undefeated southpaw with both style and substance has few gold stars on his report card.

So far.

In March, he scored a spectacular eighth-round knockout of the concrete-chinned Juan Urango, whose only previous loss was on points to the fine undefeated welterweight titlist, Andre Berto. Alexander’s previous mark was outboxing Junior Witter, who couldn’t go on after eight, to win the WBC and IBF version of the junior welter belts.

Now he faces Kotelnik, whom he calls "a good, solid fighter, but I’m a better fighter." On paper, it would seem Alexander hardly warrants laying odds of up to 10-1. I think the spread is so large because bettors know better than King just how great Alexander is.

This is nothing new. King has been so obsessed with heavyweights that he has been blind to brilliance. It took Bobby Goodman and the late Duke Durden, two of his henchmen, to keep that little Mexican scrapper and it was only when his star cash cow, Mike Tyson, went to prison that the promoter kept his empire going with Julio Cesar Chavez.

Then, of course, for a while he underplayed another Latin star, Felix Trinidad.

Hey, Main Events had Pernell Whitaker on a back-burner for a while (at least, there was a reason for featuring the more exciting Meldrick Taylor). And Floyd Mayweather Jr. wasn’t too happy with the way Bob Arum was downplaying him earlier in his career.

Alexander is on the threshold of becoming a major star, though. It is unlikely that he would let the 32-year-old Kotelnik, a decent boxer with a 31-3-1 record but only 13 knockouts, get in the way. In fact, Kotelnik looks like he was drawn up to make Alexander look like he would be favored over a couple of better-promoted 140-pound champions, Amir Khan and Timothy Bradley.

Kevin Cunningham, who has trained Alexander from the beginning, said he thought Kotelnik was "coming a long way for a butt-kicking" and when the European objected, the trainer then predicted his guy would score a second-round knockout, a reason the over-under odds of plus $2.50 for an ending before nine and a half rounds are completed may be tempting.

Getting Glen Johnson at plus odds is always tempting, even if he is now 41 and his opponent, Tavoris Cloud, is unbeaten in 20 fights with 18 knockouts.

Johnson has always had a good chin; his only stoppage came in the Stone Age in the 11th round against Bernard Hopkins in a middleweight challenge.

Cloud may be Godzilla. I haven’t seen him, so I don’t know if he deserves to be better than a 2-1 favorite over the Warrior. He won his title a year ago against another ancient, Clinton Woods of England, who in another life was 1-1-1 against Johnson. Both contestants here are come-forward stylists, so there should be lots of action. Johnson ain’t what he used to be – remember he knocked Roy Jones Jr. cold and has victories over such as Antonio Tarver, Montell Griffin and Richard Hall. But even in his dotage he was able to go 12 rounds twice in competitive bouts against the real 175-pound No. 1, Chad Dawson.

Cory Spinks’s junior middleweight defense against the undeserving No. 1 contender (who cares what alphabet’s ratings are being used here), Cornelius Brundage, is off the tube and off the board – deservedly.