By Chris Williams: This past week Top Rank promoter Bob Arum kicked dirt on Floyd Mayweather Jr’s unification bout against Marcos Maidana by saying that it’s not going to be a competitive fight that will be entertaining for boxing fans. But Mayweather has already said that he chose Maidana based on his accomplishment in beating Adrien Broner, Jesus Soto Karass and Josesito Lopez. Those wins were all very impressive victories for Maidana, and they showed that he not only has improved considerably since his last defeat against Devon Alexander in 2012, but also that he’s one of the best fighters in the welterweight division.
“Maidana is the hottest guy out there,” said Mayweather Promotions CEO Leonard Ellerbe. “He’s earned the right. Floyd made that decision based on his performance [against Adrien Broner]. He is the guy – the right guy.”
Ellerbe is right. Maidana has earned the fight against Mayweather by beating some very good welterweights and doing it in style by knocking them all out. We could be seeing a fight of the year type of bout on May 3rd when Mayweather and Maidana battle it out. This isn’t going to be some kind of one-sided fight like Mayweather’s last two fights against Saul “Canelo” Alvarez and Robert Guerrero, because Maidana brings more to the table than those two. Canelo might have more talent than Maidana, but he didn’t have the willingness to take punishment and he didn’t have the toughness needed for him to make it a competitive fight.
Canelo also didn’t have the intelligence to realize that he needed to stop boxing and start slugging after the first couple of rounds when it was readily apparent that Mayweather was giving him a boxing lesson in front of the entire world. What’s different about Maidana is that he’s smart, and knows he’s going to have to try and take Mayweather’s head off with each punch he throws. He knows he can’t win this fight unless he goes after Mayweather to try and score a knockout. With Canelo, his close in over Austin Trout last year lulled him into a fall sense of security that he could possibly out-box Mayweather and beat him at his own game on May 3rd. If Canelo had watched his fight against Trout with the sound off and seen how close the fight really was, he would have fought much differently against Mayweather by looking to knock him out from the first round on.
Maidana knows what he has to do, and he’s not going to get mixed up trying to fight another fighting style that doesn’t work for him.
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