Arum thinks Mayweather vs. Maidana is a nonsense fight

By Boxing News - 04/14/2014 - Comments

maidana678By Chris Williams: Manny Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum believes that next month’s big fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. (45-0, 26 KO’s) and WBA 147lb champion Marcos Maidana (35-3, 31 KO’s) is a bad fight for the boxing fans who pay money to see it on Showtime pay-per-view, because Arum personally feels that the fight will be a mismatch due to Mayweather’s skill advantage. Arum also sees it as a bad fight for the MGM Grand to be staging, because of the potential for it to be a one-sided affair.

“The Mayweather fight [versus Marcos Maidana] is bad for the public, who are being talked into spending good money on nonsense, and it’s bad for the MGM, which continues to peddle non-competitive matches,” Arum said via LA Times.

Arum could end up very wrong about the Mayweather-Maidana fight being a bad one, because Maidana is rarely involved in fights that are lacking in excitement. The only fight where he ever looked bad in was against Devon Alexander in 2012, and that was because Alexander elected to clinch 10 times per round, and the referee working the fight let him get away with it.

Maidana will certainly make this as interesting fight, and I don’t think the boxing public will see it as a waste of money. What was a waste of money in my view was the cost of Arum’s Manny Pacquiao vs. Tim Bradley 2 fight card last Saturday night at the MGM Grand.

Arum chose to go with a bare bones undercard, and he basically counted on boxing fans wanting to see the main event fight between Pacquiao and Bradley enough to shell out the $60-70 to see it. The Pacquiao-Bradley 2 fight was decent, but far from what I would call a great fight. A great fight is where you get knockdowns and knockouts, and we didn’t see that last Saturday. So I thought the Pacquiao-Bradley fight and the entire card was pretty much a waste.

The Mayweather-Maidana undercard fights are well worth the money because you’ve got Amir Khan facing former WBA welterweight champion Luis Collazo, and former three division world champion Adrien Broner fighting Carlos Molina. Those two fights right there are much better fights than what Arum included with the Pacquiao vs. Bradley 2 fight. Then you have Marco Antonio Periban fighting Love in what should be a highly competitive fight. That fight could be just as good as the Khan-Collazo match.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Mayweather-Maidana fight is one of the best fights of 2014, and certainly far better than what we saw from Pacquiao in his rematch against Bradley.



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