See the fight that put @ChinoMaidana in #TheMoment May 3! His victory over Adrien Broner reairs at 10p on Extreme. pic.twitter.com/jJ9i7yeCjB

— SHOWTIME SPORTS (@SHOsports) April 4, 2014

By Allan Fox: Alex Ariza, the strength and conditioning coach for WBA welterweight champion Marcos Maidana (35-3, 31 KO’s), feels that Maidana is ahead of schedule for this fight in terms of conditioning compared to his previous fight against Adrien Broner last December. With precisely one month to go before Maidana’s huge clash on May 3rd against Mayweather, Maidana is looking in excellent shape for this fight and ready to take the fight to Mayweather.

“Maidana’s been here for going on our third week now. I think that he’s ahead of schedule from where he was before the Broner fight. We’ve had three solid weeks,” Ariza said via RingTV. “He looks great. He came in in relatively good shape from Argentina, and we got to hit the ground running right away. Robert’s really pleased, and I’m really pleased, and the weight is great.”

Maidana doesn’t look nearly as heavy at this point of his training compared to what he was against Broner. Maidana came into that fight with a lot of size, and he used it to beat up on the smaller 5’7” Broner to pound out a relatively one-sided 12 round decision. This time, Maidana looks smaller and seems to be working harder on trying to pick up more speed so that he’s not over-matched against Mayweather in that department.

Whether Maidana will have any luck in that department is unclear. It might be better off for Maidana to get as much size as possible so that he can use it to try and hurt Mayweather with each punch he throws. If Maidana can hurt Mayweather with a big shot after catching him against the ropes, he might be able to finish him off with a flurry of shots.

Maidana will come into this fight in the best shape of his life, and the only thing he needs is the right strategy to give Mayweather the most problems. Maidana is fortunate that he’s following two fighters – Robert Guerrero and Saul “Canelo” Alvarez – who both took the wrong approach to trying to beat Mayweather.

Maidana needs to learn from their mistakes, and focus on being even more aggressive than they were. For his part, Guerrero definitely backed off at times after taking precise right hands from Mayweather in the early going, and he never fought as aggressively as he said he would. Canelo fought well in the last four rounds of the fight, but he wasn’t willing to go all out in the way he needed to in order to get the win. Canelo seemed to be held back by fear of gassing out due to his stamina problems.