By Dan Ambrose: WBA light welterweight champion Marcos Maidana (31-3, 28 KO’s) is possible for the undercard of WBC junior middleweight champion Saul Alvarez’s next fight on September 15th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada. There still isn’t an opponent picked out for the 28-year-old Maidana, but there is still a ton of time to pick someone out by then.
Maidana lost his last fight against Devon Alexander in an ill advised move up to 147lbs to test the waters in that weight class. Maidana looked slow and flabby, and couldn’t handle Alexander’s superior speed and constant clinching. Maidana didn’t know what to do to counter act all the clinching that Alexander was doing, and he didn’t have the excellent inside fighting skills that Tim Bradley had in beating Alexander on the inside when he would go to clinch.
Maidana had a more difficult situation with Alexander clinching as many as 15 times per round, which was basically long enough for him to get in one or two punches and immediately grab Maidana so he couldn’t punch. The referee simply allowed Alexander to clinch, and that left Maidana on his own without the skills necessary to make Alexander stop grabbing him.
Maidana is now training with Robert Garcia in Oxnard, California. Garcia trains fighters like Brandon Rios, Nonito Donaire, Antonio Margarito, and Kelly Pavlik. It’s unclear what kind of impact Garcia will have with the slow but powerful Maidana. As we saw in Rios’ last fight against Cuban Richard Abril, Garcia isn’t infallible. He can help a fighter only so much.
They have to possess the excellent skills to begin with for him to get the most of them. I’m not sure that Maidana has the needed physical skills for him to keep his World Boxing Association for long. Maidana needs some serious help with cutting off the ring and fighting on the inside because he’s going to continue to have problems against fighters that move, grab and fight in close.
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