Maidana slimming down, looking sharp & powerful

By Boxing News - 04/13/2019 - Comments

Image: Maidana slimming down, looking sharp & powerful

By Aragon Garcia: Marcos Maidana continues to make progress in slimming down to return to the ring after a near five-year layoff from the sport. Former two division world champion Maidana’s strength & conditioning coach Alex Ariza posted a video clip of him weighing in earlier this week, and he’s down to 186 pounds.

That’s well below the 215+ lbs the Argentinian knockout artist started at six weeks ago when he began his training for his comeback. The power is still there after five years of inactivity. Each time Maidana hits the body pad of his trainer, it’s like a loud gunshot.

For fans that still think the 35-year-old Maidana (35-5, 31 KOs) is heavy, they should have seen what he looked like six weeks ago when he first training. Maidana looked like a blimp, someone that didn’t resemble a former two division world champion. The way Maidana looks now is how he normally looked in between fights when he was fighting years ago. He always got big like this.

Depending on how far Maidana’s strength coach Alex Ariza wants him to go in dropping weight, he likely only has to lose another 25 lbs, and he’ll be at his old fighting weight. If Maidana loses 25 additional pounds, that puts him at 160 lbs, and he would ready to fight in June. Maidana wants to fight at a catch-weight of 151 or 152 lbs. He can easily make that weight by June for his comeback fight against possibly Phil Lo Greco. If they wait to bring Maidana back in September, he’ll easily be able to make 147. There’s five more months before September. If Maidana trains the entire time, he might end up losing too much weight, and workin his way all the back to the 140 lb weight class, which is where Maidana has spent of his pro career. Ariza was talking about having Maidana’s weight below 155 lbs. That’s pretty low for a welterweight.

By the end of April, Maidana could be in the 170s, easy. He’s around 185 lbs right now. With the weight is flying off of Maidana right now, he’ll hit the 170s by the end of the month, and he’ll be getting back to his old shape. The speed is the same for Maidana than he was at previously. This writer can’t see the difference at all in Maidana’s hand speed. He just needs to drop another 25 to 30 lbs, and he’ll be at the weight that he was at for his last fight against Mayweather in September 2014. By the time Maidana has all the weight off, he’ll have lost roughly 80 lbs. That’s a lot of weight obviously, but not compared to guys like George Foreman and Tyson Fury. Both of those guys lost over 100 lbs in coming back. Maidana well be well short of that, because he didn’t let himself go quite as bad. Maidana has enjoying the money he made from his two fights against Mayweather, but not to the extent that he put on too weight.

Maidana lost his last two fights to Floyd Mayweather Jr. in 2014. Maidana gave Mayweather a harder fight than Saul Canelo Alvarez and Manny Pacquiao. The reason for that is the pressure that Maidana put on Mayweather. Maidana was willing to walk through Mayweather’s shots to hit him with hard power hots to the head and body. Canelo and Pacquiao didn’t want to get hit, so they were spending a lot of time boxing Mayweather and fighting his fight. Maidana was too smart to play into that way of fighting.

The fights that Maidana wants in coming back to boxing are against Adrien Broner and Manny Pacquiao. Those two are fights that are a must for Maidana. If he can win those two matches, then we’re talking about him looking to take on the likes of Errol Spence Jr., Keith Thurman, Danny Garcia and maybe Terence Crawford. The important thing that Maidana needs to be conscious of is making sure he’s careful with his money in retirement, so that he doesn’t blow through his entire fortune in five years. Some boxing fans think Maidana is coming back because he’s dead broke. That’s hard to believe, but we don’t know how much he made from his two fights against Mayweather. If Maidana makes the millions that many fans believe he’ll be making in his comeback, then he needs to be careful with the money, living within his means, and not overindulge. More importantly, Maidana needs to make sure he doesn’t get too heavy like we saw him. He looked unhealthy at that weight. What’s the point of having a massive amount of money if you’re not taking care of yourself so you can enjoy it.