By Aragon Garcia: Argentinian knockout artist Marcos Maidana has decided to end his attempt at a comeback, according to Mike Coppinger. Maidana lost his desire to continue training, and will now return to his home country of Argentina. Maidana recently signed a three-fight deal with Premier Boxing Champions that would have saw him make a lot of money, perhaps even more than what he made during his career.
Maidana was set to make $1.5 million for his comeback fight alone. Phil Lo Greco was mentioned as the potential for Maidana’s first fight of his comeback. That’s a fight that Maidana likely have had no problem winning, as Lo Greco was knocked out in the first round last year by Amir Khan, who isn’t a big puncher. There were rumors that Maidana would make $9 million for his three-fight comeback, which if true, is excellent money.
Former two division world champion Maidana (35-5 31 KOs) had lost a massive amount of weight in less than two months of training with his strength & conditioning coach Alex Ariza, and appeared to be on his way to returning to the ring in June for his comeback fight. In a recent photo of the 35-year-old Maidana taken on Easter, he looked almost in fighting shape.
Mike Coppinger said this on his Twitter about Maidana opting to end his comeback:
“Marcos Maidana has decided to end comeback bid. He stopped training in Las Vegas and will return to Argentina despite signing lucrative three-fight deal with PBC in February that would have paid $1.5 million for summer return at 160. Iām told Maidana simply lost hunger. Maidana, who retired following two fights with Floyd Mayweather in 2014, earned the two biggest paydays of his career for those bouts and pushed Money to the limit in first fight. Was slated to settle back at welterweight.”
The question boxing fans have is whether the hard work of training got to Maidana or if he attempted to spar with someone, and got bounced around the ring? Maidana has been out of the ring since 2014, when he retired after a second defeat at the hands of Floyd Mayweather Jr. With the amount of time that Maidana had been out of the ring, and the amount of weight that he had put on during those years, he needed to take the go slow approach to returning to the ring. It would be unreasonable for him or anyone to assume that he could simply start in where he left off after all those years. Maidana had lived a very soft life of consuming the best foods in abundance, and enjoying himself with fine drink the way anyone would if they were rich. To get back to where Maidana was before, it would take time. He wasn’t going to be able to get back immediately. In watching Maidana train, you could see that he still possessed his power. He was carrying a lot of weight still, but the power was there, and it was clear that he could get back down to 147, he would be a threat to guys like Manny Pacquiao, Danny Garcia, Keith Thurman, Shawn Porter and Adrien Broner.
What some boxing fans believe is Maidana got handled by someone in sparring, and that hurt his self-confidence enough for him to end his comeback bid. It was way too early for Maidana to be sparring with anyone with him still carrying around a lot of fat, and his conditioning not being what it needed to be. When a fighter has lost over 40 to 50 pounds in just two months, and been out of the ring for five years, it’s not a good idea to have them spar hard with anyone remotely talented. You got put them in with limited guys that aren’t going to embarrass them and take away their self-confidence. If the management for Maidana put him in with someone good to spar, it’s understandable why he decided to end his comeback. That would be the worst thing you’d want to do with Maidana is match him with someone young and talented in his first spar after five years out of the ring.