By Chris Williams: In this Saturday’s Showtime pay-per-view rematch between WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (46-0, 26 KOs) and Marcos Maidana (35-4, 31 KOs), Mayweather says he expects Maidana to come out and foul and be a dirty fighter when they get inside the ring at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Mayweather says he’s just going to need to stay calm and use his intelligence to box Maidana and minimize the things that he attempts to do.
The referee for the fight is Kenny Bayless and he’s got a track record of not putting up with too much fouling without him putting his foot down and taking control of the fight. Bayless is going to be tested in this fight just as referee Tony Weeks was tested last May in the original Mayweather-Maidana fight.
Weeks decided to warn but not take points off. If Bayless does the same thing then Mayweather could be out there on his own on an island and will need to figure out what he can do to nullify Maidana’s roughhouse tactics.
“I think he’s [Maidana] going to come out and do what he does best be extremely dirty fighter,” Mayweather said via esnewsporting.com. “My job is to be cautious and be smart.”
It’s going to be really interesting to see if Maidana is even rougher in this fight than he was in his previous encounter with Mayweather last May. We’ve already heard Maidana’s trainer Robert Garcia speak about how Maidana will make it even tougher for Mayweather than the last time they fought.
If Garcia is serious about this then it’s going to be a real test of Bayless and Mayweather to see what can be done to control/limit the fouling that takes place. It would be terrible if Mayweather were to get hurt by a punch to the back of the head or a low blow in the fight, causing a stoppage of one kind or another. It would also be huge disappointment if Maidana ends up getting disqualified for his fouling. That’s why boxing fans have to hope that Maidana plays it clean in this fight and doesn’t resort to fouling to try and stay competitive.
“I guess I got to do more than win 9 rounds. I’ve got to win all 12 rounds or score a knockout,” Mayweather said. “I’m not just fighting a fighter, I’m also fighting the bias fans. When you’re at the top people want to take shots at you. The bar is set so high for me so I understand. I have a history of making adjustments, getting stronger and getting better in a fight.”
It was a minor victory for Maidana to win 3 rounds the last time he fought Mayweather, and that kind of tells you what the standards are for Mayweather. He’s expected to beat his opponents by lopsided decisions and knockouts each time he fights, and if he comes up short of that mark due to him wanting to make it an entertaining fight for the boxing fans then Mayweather is seen as having lost it or in the case of trainer Freddie Roach of being over-the-hill.
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