Maidana says “It will be only him [Khan] and only me and we can settle it”

By William Mackay: WBA light welterweight interim champion Marcos Maidana (29-1, 27 KO’s) is annoyed by all the talking that World Boxing Association light welterweight champion Amir Khan (23-1, 17 KO’s) has been doing lately outside of the ring. Maidana wants to put an end to Khan and his talk, saying in an article at Examiner.com “I don’t like talking. I know Amir likes to talk but I feel he talks too much and that makes me feel uncomfortable. So I’m positive inside of the ring. It will be only him and only me and we can settle it in the ring.” It sounds like Maidana is fed up with Khan’s bragging and looking ahead to other future fights.

The best thing that Maidana can do then is knock Khan out, shut him up and force him to focus on rebuilding and keeping his trap shut. Khan wasn’t doing much talking after he was stopped in the 1st round by Breidis Prescott in the 1st round two years ago. However, Khan’s ego seems to have healed very quickly after being fed a series of light punching fighters that were designed to make Khan look good and help him restore his lost confidence. Now Khan will be right back where he was when he was brutally stopped by Prescott.

It’s going to be interesting to see if Khan has made any adjustments or if this is something that he can actually prevent. It may be that Khan’s glass jaw can’t take any of Maidana’s power shots, let alone an entire fights worth. Khan thinks he’ll be able to stop Maidana, but for him to do that he’s going to have to take some risks by putting his fragile chin without punching range of Maidana’s big shots. That could be fatal for Khan if Maidana is able to land anything at all.

Maidana explains his situation before his last fight against veteran DeMarcus Corley in August. Maidana says “I was inactive for three months after the [Victor] Cayo fight. Then I went up in weight, I was like 168 pounds and I had only five weeks to lose weight….It’s the kind of opponent where you just go there and knock him out. I learned a very good lesson in that fight.”

Perhaps the most important lesson that Maidana learned was that he can’t let himself get so big in between fights and he needs more time to take the weight off. Maidana has still looked thick in recent photos and appears to be in the neighborhood of 160. He’s got a lot of time still to take the weight off, but Maidana needs to monitor his eating in between fights or he could find it harder and harder for him to make the 140 pound light welterweight limit.