I'm just happy to face Mayweather but it doesn't feel like I hit the lottery like he said. Only beating him it will
— Marcos René Maidana (@ChinoMaidana) February 25, 2014
By Allan Fox: While some boxing fans may feel that WBA welterweight champion Marcos Maidana (35-3, 31 KO’s) won the lottery by being selected over Amir Khan to get a fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. (45-0, 26 KO’s) on May 3rd, but Maidana doesn’t feel that way. As you can see, he says he won’t be feeling like he hit the lottery until he beats the 37-year-old Mayweather in their important fight.
It’s going to be really difficult for Maidana to accomplish his goal of getting a victory over Mayweather because he’s going to be a huge underdog in this fight due to the wide difference in skills between them.
Maidana may be giving up a lot in the speed and skills department against Mayweather, but he’s going to have a real chance of beating him with his power and pressure in a way that Amir Khan never would have had. Khan would have turned a fight between him and Mayweather into a likely dull chess match where the two fighters take turns landing pot shots until Mayweather finally timed Khan and knocked him out.
Maidana has the ability to walk through Mayweather’s best shots and punish him in a way that Khan or even Saul “Canelo” Alvarez never would. Canelo had the power to give Mayweather a lot of problems, but he didn’t have the aggressiveness or the willingness to take Mayweather’s best shots in order to land his own big punches. That’s the key difference right there.
Maidana is like a bigger version of Jose Luis Castillo, and he’s going to force Mayweather to fight 3 minutes of every round. That doesn’t mean Mayweather will choose to fight Maidana. He’ll very likely use his feet to avoid his unrelenting attacks, but Mayweather will need to move constantly in each round if he wants to stay one step ahead of Maidana.
The question would then be can Mayweather move for 12 rounds? Would he have the youth to stay stay away from Maidana for 12 rounds? If Mayweather can’t stay out of the way of Maidana’s big punches, then he’s going to be in for a world of hurt in the same way he was in his fight against Miguel Cotto. Maidana could pull off an upset in this fight if Mayweather doesn’t have the ability to stay clear of him.
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