(Photo credit: Esther Lin/Showtime) By Chris Williams: Marcos Maidana (35-5, 31 KOs) came up empty last night in losing to WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (47-0, 26 KOs) in their Mayhem rematch. Maidana after the fight said he doesn’t want a third fight against Mayweather.
It’s good that Maidana beat Mayweather to the punch, because there’s no way that Mayweather will ever bother fighting Maidana again. At least by Maidana going on record first before Mayweather had a chance to say anything, it helps cushion the blow that Mayweather is moving on and won’t be giving Maidana another chance.
Mayweather won the fight by a 12 round unanimous decision by the scores 116-111, 116-111 and 115-112. I can’t say I agree with any of those scores because they were way too close for the fight that actually took place in the ring. You can say that Maidana won maybe 1 or 2 rounds, but that’s it. He connected only 22% of his punches on 128 of 572 punches thrown, according to CompuBox.
Just like after his previous fight against Mayweather, Maidana refused to acknowledge that he’d lost the fight to Mayweather last night. It was kind of sad to see Maidana stubbornly refusing to admit that he’d lost to the better man. What was even sadder was that Maidana denied biting Mayweather’s hand in the 8th round. Mayweather gave Maidana the rematch and this is what happens. Mayweather didn’t have to agree to fight Maidana a second time. Talk about biting the hand that feeds.
“I don’t want to waste my time with a third fight,” Maidana said via ESPN.com. “I trained with all my heart to get this type of result. This is not fair. There’s no reason for another fight. If the judges want to give the fight to fighters that run, they can give it to him. I was attacking all the time. Maybe I’m wrong, but I thought that I was the aggressor. I kept my plan to be aggressive but he kept holding and pushing.”
Maidana was attacking all the time, but it was ineffective aggression. Maidana was missing badly all night long and fouling from time to time. He lost a point in the 10th round when he pushed Mayweather to the canvas after shoving his forearm under his throat and literally forcing him to the canvas. But by then the point deduction meant little, because Maidana had no chance of winning the fight other than by knockout.
Mayweather landed 51% of his punches in connecting on 166 of 326 punches. He threw far less than the 572 punches that Maidana threw, but his 51% connect percentage dwarfed the 22% connect percentage from Maidana.
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