By Dan Ambrose: #3 WBA, #5 WBC welterweight contender Marcos Maidana (35-5, 31 KOs) has decided not to fight for the remainder of 2015. The 32-year-old Maidana will be back inside the ring in 2016, possibly fighting at 154 rather than 147. Maidana, a two division world champion, reportedly wants to take it easy with his family in Argentina in 2015 instead of getting back into a grueling training camp.
Even if Maidana wanted to come back this year, it’s highly unlikely that he could do it unless he was willing to fight at middleweight or super middleweight. Maidana has looked really heavy since losing back to back fights to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2014. Maidana let his weight get out of control and looks to have ballooned up to near 200.
Getting that weight off won’t be easy for Maidana even when he takes his time in 2016 to burn the blubber off. Perhaps that’s why we’re likely going to see the 32-year-old Maidana back at junior middleweight instead of at welterweight.
“Maidana will be a little longer away from the ring until 2016. He will be resting with his family. Maidana’s last fight was one year ago against Floyd Mayweather, who he fought twice in 2014,” Maidana’s manager Sebastian Contursi said to fightnews.com.
“Maidana out until 2016, three-weight title run at 154 possible,” Maidana said on his Twitter.
It’s going to be very difficult for Maidana to make anything happen at all in the junior middleweight division. The 5’7” Maidana doesn’t have the size to compete against big junior middleweights like the 6’0” Jermall Charlo, 6’1” Demetrius Andrade and the 5’9” Erislandy Lara. Maidana is simply too short to make anything happen in the 154lb division.
Additionally, there aren’t big money fights in this weight class unless Saul “Canelo” Alvarez opts to look Maidana’s way. But the only way that fight happens is if Maidana can start winning fights again and stop his losing streak.
Maidana hasn’t won a fight since December 2013, when he defeated the smaller Adrien Broner. If Maidana can win two or three fights against weaker opposition at 154, then maybe Canelo will look his way for a fight. I don’t think that’s a fight that would pull in any pay-per-view buys because Maidana hasn’t fought since last year, and before that he was beaten twice by Mayweather.
More than likely, we’ll see Maidana find a way to melt down the extra weight to get back down to 147 once he finds out the hard way that he’s too small to fight in the 154lb division against the taller and faster fighters. It’s obviously a mistake in the first place for Maidana to move out of the welterweight division because that’s where all the big fights take place.
Nothing much happens at 154 nowadays. But it already was a bad move on Maidana’s part to stop fighting for the past year after his losses to Mayweather. Maidana should have kept busy and picked off at least two of the top welterweights in order to maximize his earnings. Fighters have a very short shelf life anyway, and it’s just not smart to take yourself out of commission for any length of time. Maidana might end up regretting sitting out of action all this time and putting on all that weight.
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