(Photo credit: Tom Casino/Showtime) By Dan Ambrose: Trainer Robert Garcia said that Floyd Mayweather’s team are trying to get his fighter Marcos Maidana to wear the Grant gloves for tonight’s fight instead of their usual Everlast MX gloves. Garcia said that he offered to have Maidana use Reyes gloves, but those were rejected by Mayweather.
A pair of red Everlast MX gloves were approved by the California State Athletic Commission, but those were rejected as well by Mayweather’s team. Garcia said that there’s no way he’ll agree to have Maidana fight using the Grant gloves, which are the type that Mayweather uses when he fights. Garcia isn’t familiar with the gloves, and he doesn’t want Maidana potentially suffering an injury with them.
“We said how about those Reyes gloves, and they said ‘Nope.’ They didn’t approve of the Reyes,” Garcia said. “They were pushing for those Grant [gloves]. I don’t like Grant. My fighters never wear Grant. The contract says we can wear whatever gloves we wish…Ellerbe said ‘No fight.’ I said ‘Okay, no fight.’ So we walked out and said the fight’s off.”
The Grant gloves are said to have a lot of padding around the knuckles. They’re the perfect gloves for fighters with hand problems, and they’d be a good glove to wear if you wanted to avoid suffering an injury. Grant gloves aren’t used by punchers. It’s is asking a lot of Maidana to use a glove that he’s never worn before during his career. He would be fighting for the first time with the gloves, and he might not be at his best using them because he wouldn’t be familiar with them. Having Maidana use the Grant gloves could make it easier for Mayweather to take Maidana’s big shots due to the added cushion around the knuckles of the gloves.
There’s way too much money on the line for both fighters for this fight not to happen tonight. The only question is which fighter will end up getting his way. It seems pretty obvious that Maidana will need to agree to whatever Mayweather’s team wants for this fight because he doesn’t have the cache to be throwing his weight around or trying to stand up to someone like Mayweather. If fight doesn’t happen for Maidana, it would be huge blow to his career because he may not get another opportunity for a payday like this again.
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