By Chris Williams: This Saturday night WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (46-0, 26 KOs) is going to be looking to improve upon the performance from his last fight against Argentinian slugger Marcos Maidana (35-4, 31 KOs) when he gets him inside the ring for their “Mayhem” rematch at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Mayweather wants to improve upon his performance from last time out, as does Maidana. Trainer Robert Garcia has been talking about the additional 4 weeks of training that will benefit Maidana, he hopes, for the rematch.
The last time Maidana fought Mayweather he only had 5 weeks to train for the fight, and he and Garcia think that’s the reason why he faded down the stretch. This time we’re going to see if Maidana’s conditioning is better or if it’s no different than last time. I have a feeling we’re not going to see a whole lot of improvement from Maidna’s conditioning because he’s always been a fighter who faded in the 2nd half of his fights.
“The longer training camp will be conducive to him being in better condition,” Dan Rafael said to ESPN. “Even with a longer training camp and coming in at a lighter weight, I’m not sure what he [Maidana] can do that will be dramatically different or better than what he did in the first fight. I’m pretty sure based on how Floyd fights he can probably perform better than he did the first fight. I’m not sure how much better Maidana can be than he was in the first fight.”
I agree with Rafael about Mayweather having a better upside for the rematch than Maidana. With Maidana taking weight off in hopes of it leading to him being in better condition, we’re likely going to see Maidana weaker and just as slow as he was the last time.
The conditioning may be slightly better for Maidana, but not enough to where it’s going to be a significant improvement for him. Maidana will have the ability to throw more punches without tiring as quick, but it’s also going to make him weaker and that’s going to even out any positive that he’ll get from his improved conditioning.
Mayweather is the one that will benefit the most from the rematch because he’s already throwing more punches in training camp, and I wouldn’t be surprised to see Mayweather throwing a lot of long and sustained flurries on Saturday night. If Mayweather throws a long flurry of shots early in this fight, I wouldn’t be surprised if we see a stoppage. Mayweather has the hand speed to put together a 20-punch flurry that will make it hard for the referee Kenny Bayless not to step in and halt the fight if Maidana is just taking the shots.
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