Alexander: I Took Porter Lightly; Won't Repeat Mistake

By Keith Idec

Devon Alexander still can’t quite explain what hindered him during his loss to Shawn Porter a year ago.

“In that fight, I wasn’t thinking,” Alexander said earlier this week on a conference call to discuss his fight Saturday night against Amir Khan. “In that fight, I didn’t follow the game plan. Mentally, I wasn’t there. I was just not using my skills in that fight. Mentally, I just wasn’t there.”

Porter defeated Alexander by unanimous decision and took the St. Louis southpaw’s IBF welterweight title, a championship Porter (24-1-1, 15 KOs) lost to England’s Kell Brook (33-0, 22 KOs) by majority decision two fights later. The 28-year-old Alexander didn’t offer an excuse for failing to box better against Porter, who won 116-112, 116-112 and 115-113 last Dec. 7 at Barclays Center in Brooklyn.

“No reason for that,” Alexander said. “I took him a little lightly because I beat him in the amateurs. But that’s no excuse. That’s no excuse, but I know that the loss was from what I didn’t do. It’s not what Shawn Porter did or that he was a magnificent fighter, that he had all these skills. It’s just stuff that I didn’t do. And it won’t happen again – I promise you.”

Alexander (26-2, 14 KOs) and England’s Khan (29-3, 19 KOs) will meet in a 12-round welterweight fight Saturday night at MGM Grand in Las Vegas. The Alexander-Khan clash will headline a four-fight broadcast on Showtime scheduled to start at 9 p.m. ET.

Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.