(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) by J.R. Leon: Marco Maidana’s trainer and 2012 Trainer Of The Year, Robert Garcia, said in Episode 2 of Showtime’s All Access that Floyd Mayweather’s toughest fights were against opponents who applied pressure and made the fight an aggressive one. Unfortunately, if this is the way Maidana is being trained for his upcoming fight against Floyd, he will be in lots of trouble.
Looking back on Floyd’s most recent fights, going back to the Zab Judah fight in 2008, you can clearly see how speed and accuracy was and still is Floyd’s biggest enemy. Judah, who at that time was still considered one of the best 147 pounders in the world, in my honest opinion won the first three rounds against Floyd, even making Floyd touch his glove against the canvas on the second round, which the ref called a slip.
But knowing what we know about Judah, by the fifth round he was gassed as usual and was outclassed by a better opponent. But right there we saw what was needed to beat Floyd – speed and accuracy.
The next fight that resembles this one is Floyd’s fight against Sugar Shane Mosley in 2010. This was the only fight that I can recall in Floyd’s history, that he was actually caught with a few hard rights and was even clinching onto his opponent. During the first two rounds of the fight Mosley outlanded Floyd and also won those rounds in my opinion.
Unfortunately for Mosley, he tired himself by throwing way too many punches after those big rights in the second round and Floyd was able to regain his composure and capitalize on a tired Mosley.
So between these two fights and even after, what do we have? We have a bunch of aggressive, come forward, attack and pressure opponents – none that even made a blip on the scorecards (although Cotto did have a few good rounds).
We have Hatton, Diaz, Cotto and Alvarez(I’m not even mentioning the other opponents) and out of all of them, only Cotto was able to make the fight interesting by forcing some exchanges with Floyd. But honestly the aggressive style Garcia talks about is an imaginary blueprint that Oscar De La Hoya keeps referencing.
Oscar De La Hoya, in his mind believes that he laid out a plan to easily win against Floyd. Supposedly this was the outcome of his fight against Floyd back in 2007. Now I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but if the blueprint was so correct, why hasn’t anyone used it properly? Easy answer, because it’s not correct.
To beat Mayweather – yes, easier said than done – the opponent must use body punching as his main weapon. Of course the opponent will have to throw some jabs and combinations to the head, but if he doesn’t attack the body constantly and with ferocity, he will never have a chance of landing a debilitating blow to the head at the later rounds. Floyd’s defense is second to none and for all the opponents who have tried to attack him to the head, none have landed anything of importance.
Given the fact that Maidana doesn’t have the speed of Judah or Mosley, he should then train to utilize his endurance and body punching. Unfortunately from Garcia’s comments, we are led to believe that he is going to be using De La Hoya’s so called blueprint.
If that’s the case he must know that the body is the main point of focus. Floyd will see Maidana’s punches coming a mile away and will defend against them properly, just like he has done in the past. But by going mainly to the body for the first six or seven rounds, Maidana gives himself the best chance of tiring Floyd on the later rounds, then hoping to catch him with a powerful punch upstairs.
So will Garcia advice Maidana to fight the same way all others have and failed? Does Garcia see something in Maidana’s aggressiveness that makes him believe he is different than those previous fighters? Now if Maidana comes into the ring with this “pressure” mentality, and three or four rounds into the fight realizes that it’s not working, does Garcia and Maidana have a backup plan or strategy against the best boxer of our generation? And finally, is Robert Garcia placing Maidana in a disadvantageous position by having him train and fight in such an unsuccessful way?
We are only days away from finding out!
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