By Chris Williams: WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (46-0, 26 KOs) reminded boxing fans and Marcos Maidana (35-4, 31 KOs) last night that Maidana isn’t on the same level as him and he’s going to be taking a considerable step up in class when the two fighters meet in the center of the ring on Saturday, September 13th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Mayweather respects Maidana 100 percent as a fighter and believes he’s a competent guy who would give anyone in the division problems at 147. But Mayweather doesn’t see Maidana as being an A level fighter like himself. He seems Maidana as strictly as a B level guy making a big jump up in competition, and like most B-level fighters that face Mayweather, Maidana is going to have some problems.
“You know you [Maidana] lost. There’s a difference between A-level fighters and B level fighters. I can make adjustments always. I kick [expletive] for a living. That’s what I do.”
What Mayweather says is true about making adjustments and about Maidana being a B-level guy. Maidana failed to prove that he could make adjustments last May when things turned bad for him in the last 6 rounds. Maidana started off well in that fight, but it was Mayweather who made the adjustments to take over the fight when he realized that he needed to in order to win. But when it came time for Maidana needing to make adjustments to counter Mayweather’s adjustments, he couldn’t do it.
The only thing Maidana could do is continue to pressure and hope that Mayweather would stand in place long enough for him to bombard him with punches like he’d done in the first 6 rounds of the fight.
Sometimes B level fighters can rise up and defeat the A level guys by showing a ton of heart and/or power to wear them down and outlast them, but it’s kind of rare for that to happen. The B level guy has got to have a great plan A and several backup plans to rifle through if things turn bad.
Robert Garcia, Maidana’s trainer, didn’t appear to have any backup plan last May for Maidana to use to deal with Mayweather’s adjustments. Maidana was looking at Garcia for help in the second half of the fight, but he got none. The Garcia cupboard was bare when it came to ideas to help Maidana out. If that’s going to be the case this Saturday night then you can expect Maidana to get soundly beaten.
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