Marcos Maidana sprinting off weight in week four of comeback

By Boxing News - 04/03/2019 - Comments

Image: Marcos Maidana sprinting off weight in week four of comeback

By Aragon Garcia: Marcos Maidana is making excellent progress in burning off the weight for his comeback fight in the summer. The former two division world champion Maidana (35-5, 31 KOs) is working out with Alex Ariza to get his weight down low enough for him to fight at a catch-weight at 152 pounds for a possible fight against Phil Lo Greco in the summer for August or September.

Maidana, 35, was over 200 lbs when he started his training camp 4 weeks ago, and he’s now at 190. Lo Greco wants the fight at 154, but with the way the weight if flying off Maidana, he’ll be ready to fight at 147 by then.

After almost five years out of the ring, Maidana has lost approximately 30 lbs already in just one month of training. Maidana only has to lose a little over 30 lbs to get back down to his old fighting weight in the 157 to 165 lb range. Maidana will dehydrate from there to make weight at 147 for his fights at welterweight.

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The punching power looks to be still there for Maidana despite him having been out of the ring for five years since his last fight in September 2014 against Floyd Mayweather Jr. The power is there. The only thing that the 5’7″ Maidana needs is to lose enough weight for him to get back down to the 147 lb weight class.

Maidana is too short to fight at junior middleweight against the taller fighters like 6’1″ Jarrett Hurd, 5’11” Jermell Charlo, 6’0″ Jaime Munguia, 6’1″ Tony Harrison and 5’10” Julian ‘J-Rock’ Williams. Although a lot of boxing fans think Maidana will need to fight in the 154 lb weight class, that’s not a good option for him. Maidana spent most of his career fighting in the 140 lb weight class, and he only moved up to 147 in the last three years of his career in 2012. Moving up to 154 would be a mistake for Maidana. Besides that, there’s no money fights for Maidana at junior middleweight. The nice payday fights are all at 147 against Manny Pacquiao, Adrien Broner, Errol Spence Jr., Keith Thurman, Danny Garcia, Amir Khan and Shawn Porter.

If Maidana hadn’t retired after his second defeat to Mayweather in 2014, he would have made a lot of money by now in a rematch with Broner, and fights against Pacquiao, Thurman, Spence, Danny Garcia, Shawn Porter and who knows. It’s good that the Argentinean Maidana is finally coming back now, but he could have been making money all this time if he hadn’t walked away from the sport after his second loss to Mayweather five years ago.

Maidana is going to make a lot of money with his comeback if he wins his next three fights, which could see him facing Lo Greco, Broner and Pacquiao. Maidana might make more money in his next three fights than he did in his two fights with Mayweather. If Maidana looks good, hopefully he doesn’t retire again. As to why Maidana is making the comeback now after five years, there are rumors that he’s spent his fortune that he made from his two fights against Mayweather. It’s more likely the case of Maidana seeing all the money that the other fighters like Adrien Broner is making with Premier Boxing Champions, and Maidana wants to get in on it too. He beat Broner without any problems in 2013, so it has to be an irritant for him to watch him making massive amounts of money as the opponent for superstars like Pacquiao and Mikey Garcia. Broner isn’t even winning fights, and he’s still making tons of money with PBC. Maidana has the kind of talent that would enable him to beat fighters like Mikey and Pacquiao. Mikey Garcia might be done with the welterweight division, but a fight between him and Maidana would bring in a lot of PPV buys on Showtime if Mikey chooses to stay at 147. He lost his last fight to Errol Spence on March 16 last month.

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