By Dan Ambrose: WBO super featherweight champion Mikey Garcia 34-0, 28 KOs) will be helping out title challenger Marcos Maidana (35-4, 31 KOs) sparring to get him ready for his rematch against WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (46-0, 26 KOs) on September 13th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.
Mikey is the brother of Maidana’s trainer Robert Garcia, and he wanted to the opportunity to spar with Maidana and help get ready. Mikey’s job will be to try and imitate Mayweather’s style as best as he can. It’s not going to be easy because Mikey is smaller than Mayweather, and he fights nothing like him.
For Maidana’s last fight against Mayweather, Mikey sparred with him once to give him some rounds. They were competitive rounds, but Maidana was clearly the stronger fighter and was able to walk through Mikey’s punches to nail him with big shots again and again. Hopefully, Mikey has put on a little weight since then because he looked too frail the last time they sparred to be much of any help. Maidana needs guys that are a little more solid than the super featherweight Mikey to get him ready for what he’s going to be dealing with against Mayweather.
“That’s what I’m going to try more,” Garcia said to esnewsreporting.com in talking about how he plans on using movement in his sparring sessions with Maidana. “The last time I wasn’t in shape. I’m going to get some rounds in and give him some work. This time I want to imitate him [Mayweather] more and use my footwork to show some things that Mayweather’s going to try to do.”
“I was impressed with the way Maidana was against him,” Mikey said. “He [Maidana] was able to land some good shots on Mayweather. He landed some jabs even that people normally don’t land on Floyd. I think the age may be catching up to him [Mayweather] a little bit.”
Mikey needs to stay at super featherweight for as long as possible because in looking at how Maidana was able to pound him in their previous sparring session, I don’t think it would be a good idea for Mikey to move up in weight to light welterweight or welterweight to fight someone like Manny Pacquiao. Even lightweight might be a step too far for Mikey, because guys like Yuriorkis Gamboa and Terence Crawford would be a problem for him.
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