Robert Garcia wants Maidana vs. Pacquiao next

By Boxing News - 01/06/2015 - Comments

maidana555666By Chris Williams: If the Floyd Mayweather Jr vs. Manny Pacquiao can’t get made for early May like they’re currently pushing for, Robert Garcia, the trainer for former two division world champion, wants his fighter Marcos Maidana to face Pacquiao.

Garcia thinks that Pacquiao isn’t the same fighter he was five years ago, and he sees him ripe for the picking for the hard hitting Maidana. Under his watch, Maidana has improved a lot with his training tips.

Maidana is also coming off of two fights against Mayweather Jr and that obviously has helped Maidana improve his game. He can use those things he learned by facing Pacquiao and showing the boxing public the difference between Mayweather and Pacquiao.

“For me, if I was to pick, I’d rather get Maidana in the ring with Pacquiao. It’s not the same Pacquiao anymore,” Garcia said via Fighthype. “Chinos got good power, he’s learned a lot from me. It would be a great fight. Pacquiao is still very fast and very strong, so it’s not an easy fight for either. It’s a fight that we would like.”

It’s a fight that a lot of the boxing public would like a great deal. It’s clearly a better fight than Pacquiao vs. Jessie Vargas, even though Maidana is coming off of two losses. I’m not sure that Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum would be interested in making a fight between Pacquiao and Maidana at this point.

If Arum didn’t like the idea of putting Pacquiao in with Ruslan Provodnikov after the Russian fighter was beaten by Chris Algieri, then it’s likely that Arum will say no to a fight between Pacquiao and Maidana.

As exciting as Maidana’s first fight against Mayweather was in 2014, I think Pacquiao would get more pay-per-view buys against him than his recent fights against Algieri, Tim Bradley and Brandon Rios. Maidana has a lot of fans and it’s possible he could increase Pacquiao’s buy rate.

At the end of the day, it’s likely that Arum will want to keep Pacquiao away from a big slugger like Maidana because he’s got the power to do to Pacquiao what Juan Manuel Marquez did to him by knocking him out cold.

It’s possible that Pacquiao could fight Maidana at a strength-draining catch-weight to weaken him like in his fights against Antonio Margarito and Miguel Cotto, but it might not work enough. Maidana has the kind of power where he’s dangerous at 140 almost as much as he is at 147.



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