By Dan Ambrose: Golden Boy Promotions Oscar De La Hoya says he was surprised by the movement and the overall fatigue that he saw from WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr in his 12 round unanimous decision win over Golden Boy fighter Marcos Maidana on September 13th at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

De La Hoya says that he was kind of shocked to see Mayweather moving so much, and even moving still in the 12th round of the fight. De La Hoya apparently expected Mayweather to stand stationary more and punch with the bigger and stronger Maidana.

De La Hoya says that Maidana wasn’t his normal self in that fight. De La Hoya didn’t elaborate about what was different about Maidana other than saying he didn’t seem like himself. It could be that Maidana was focusing on boxing more rather than slugging, but then again he didn’t have a stationary target to fight so he was kind of forced to box more rather than punching like he did last May in his first fight against Mayweather.

Maidana showed good defensive skills in avoiding some of Mayweather’s power shots in the fight rather than just taking them to the head like he’d done in his first fight against Mayweather.

“I honestly saw a tired Mayweather,” Mayweather said to esnewsreporting.com in describing his thoughts on the Mayweather-Maidana 2 fight. “I saw a Maidana that really wasn’t himself. I was an easier fight for Maywreather because of his speed, because of his intelligence up in the ring. I was a bit taken aback by Mayweather’s dancing around the ring in the last round especially. It just showed me that he was a bit distracted, a bit tired. Maybe just age is catching up to him. It happens in boxing. It happens to the very to the best. He [Maidana] did shake him up a little bit. It was a beautiful punch to the chin which wobbled Mayweather. Another punch that surprised me was a punch before Mayweather called time out [in the 8th round], before the apparent biting of the glove. Maidana hit him with a really good shot. To me, Mayweather wanted to rest, and to a lot of people it looked like Mayweather wanted to rest, but who knows? His legs wobbled a couple of times.”

If De La Hoya wonders why Mayweather looked so tired, he might want to consider that Mayweather’s constant movement was a factor in wearing him down. When a fighter moves for a full 12 rounds like Mayweather did, it’s going to tire you out. Even younger fighters have major problems moving for any length of time. But when you have a fighter moving for 12 rounds like Mayweather did against Maidana, it’s going to make him tired.

Age might be catching up with Mayweather but it didn’t affect him enough for him to lose to Maidana. He beat him for a second time, and added another Golden Boy scalp to his resume. De La Hoya might want to try and get another one of his Golden Boy fighters such as Danny Garcia or Amir Khan to be Mayweather’s next opponent. Maybe if De La Hoya goes through enough of his fighters in his Golden Boy stable he might be able to find someone that can hang with Mayweather.