By Jim Dower: Marco Maidana (35-5, 31 KOs) is coming off of consecutive decision losses to WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr, but that isn’t keeping the 31-year-old Maidana from wanting to get another big money fight.
Maidana has his sights set on getting a fight against WBO welterweight champion Manny Pacquiao, according to his trainer Robert Garcia. Whether Maidana has a chance of getting that fight with Pacquiao straightaway is another question altogether.
It seems reasonable to assume that Pacquiao’s promoter Bob Arum won’t bother matching him against Maidana due to his recent defeats. Arum would have to know that it wouldn’t be a marketable fight if he matched Pacquiao against Maidana.
If Arum wasn’t willing to match Pacquiao against Ruslan Provodnikov due to him having been recently beaten by Chris Algieri, then it seems likely that Arum won’t let Pacquiao fight Maidana.
“If you ask Chino [Maidana], he wants to fight Manny Pacquiao,” Garcia said via thaboxingvoice.com. “It’s all up to his management team to do something right.”
It’s more likely that Maidana will need to beat top contenders like Keith Thurman or Amir Khan in order for him to become a viable option for a fighter as popular as Pacquiao. Since Khan will likely not agree to fight Maidana again, you can pretty much cross him off his list because that fight isn’t going to happen.
Even if Khan wanted to fight Maidana, it’s highly probable that Khan’s promoters at Golden Boy and his adviser Al Haymon would nix that fight from happening. Khan is being matched up against a certain type of fighter in order to keep him winning long enough to get a fight against Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Khan’s not being matched against punchers, and that means that Maidana won’t likely ever get another crack at him. Thurman is a tough match-up for Maidana due to Thurman’s style of backing away if his opponent tries to land a punch. Thurman won’t stand in the pocket in his fights, and he prefers to move in circles much of the time. Maidana would find himself chasing Thurman all night long.
If Maidana is going to get a fight against Pacquiao, he would be better off going a different route by facing guys like Shawn Porter and Kell Brook to earn the fight. Those guys will actually engage with him, and it would make for an interesting fight.
Comments are closed.