By Francisco Hernandez: In what has to be one of the most outlandish robberies of the decade Marcos “Chino” Maidana was robbed of a win last night at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas in his fight with Amir Khan. What we saw last night was Maidana like a farmer carrying a hatchet chasing a fluttering chicken around the ring. Initially it looked like Khan would slug it out with Maidana, as he dropped Maidana in the first round with a body shot, and the fight looked to become a slugfest.
Khan instead opted to fire pitter patter punches and then run as fast as he could from Maidana. Maidana kept up a relentless pressure, when Khan stopped running; Maidana would land the hardest blows throughout the fight, vicious uppercuts, and short hooks. The late rounds were all Maidana, as he rocked Khan; Khan was knocked out on his feet, and would have gone down had not the referee interfered to save Khan several times from being beheaded by Maidana. After being rocked and chased in the last round, Khan tried to steal the round from Maidana by throwing a flurry of weak punches that landed on Maidana’s gloves.
Maidana had to fight a second man in the ring last night; his name was referee Joe Cortez. Cortez prevented Maidana from fighting on the inside, breaking up the fight as soon as Maidana started doing damage inside. Cortez seemed trigger happy to penalize Maidana throughout the fight, while he looked the other way when it came to Khan. At one point in the fight Cortez even threatened Maidana “You got a problem with me!” after Maidana complained of one sided refereeing. Cortez would go on to save Amir Khan in the late rounds by stepping in and stopping the action every time Khan was about to get decapitated and knocked out. Miguel Diaz who is Maidana’s trainer was so upset at the refereeing that he yelled at Cortez, asking him not to be one-sided. In my opinion, if Cortez would have refereed Chavez vs. Meldrick Taylor, Taylor would have won that fight, although he still would never have been the same after that brutal whipping he took at Chavez hands.
It is doubtful that Khan can recover from the beating that he got. He will probably not recover psychologically or physically. It took him awhile to build enough confidence to fight Maidana after Khan was knocked out cold by Colombian Breidis Prescott. There are plenty of examples in Boxing history where fighters won on the scorecards but physically and mentally were never the same again. Whatever fighting spirit Amir Khan had was knocked out of him last night by Marcos Maidana. Amir Khan fluttering around the ring like a chicken, at one point it seemed he would fly out of the ring and escape through the exits. After this fright, we know what is going to happen. Amir Khan will hide in Britain where fights can be stacked in his favor more easily than in Vegas; he will fight pitter patter boxers like Zab Judah. It will be a cold day in hell before Amir Khan Fights outside of England again. Freddie Roach will follow the same old Manny Pacquiao strategy of calling out Mayweather and then saying that Mayweather doesn’t want to fight so he has to pit Khan against a series of Palookas ala Pacquiao. Rest assured he will not repeat his mistake of getting in the ring with a real fighter like Marcos Maidana.
Marcos Maidana when asked about his future fights, responded: “I’ll fight anyone, put them in the ring and I’ll fight them.” It is doubtful that any of the top fighters of the division will want to fight Maidana, because against Maidana you have to fight for your life, or run like a chicken. Although the judges took the fight from Maidana, in real terms Maidana was the winner last night at the Mandalay Bay, last night there was only one person in danger in that ring, and it wasn’t Marcos Maidana, it was a fluttering chicken-like fighter named Amir Khan.
Comments are closed.