By Jim Maltzman: Marcos Maidana is slowly but surely dropping weight and starting to resemble his old self as he prepares for his exhibition match. His April 18 fight against 47-year-old former kickboxer Jorge Acero Cali has been postponed. There’s still no date for when it’ll take place.
Maidana still looks sturdy, and he doesn’t seem to have lost anything in that part of his game. If he looks good in defeating Cali, he could return to the sport and go after some top welterweights. At 147 would be the best weight class for Maidana, as he’s too short at 5’7″ to fight at 154.
Maidana has more time to lose weight
It’s good news for the 36-year-old Maidana (35-5, 31 KOs) that he won’t be fighting Cali this month, considering that it gives him more time to look weight. The 5’7″ former two-division world champion Maidana reported weighed close to 200 pounds when he started training for the fight.
Last month around this time, Maidana looked chunkier, slower, and not nearly as trim as he is now. He appears to have lost at least 10 lbs since then. The way Maidana looks now, he has around 30 pounds to lose before he is back at his old fighting weight.
It’s doubtful that Maidana will drop that low given that his opponent Cali is a heavyweight.
This isn’t the first time the former two-vision world champion Maidana has tried to make a comeback. A couple of years ago, he lost a lot a ton of weight while trying to return to the ring, but he eventually aborted his efforts. Some believe it too was too much, too soon for Maidana.
He worked hard, and he looked in better shape than he is today. Unfortunately, Maidana gave up and returned to his life of leisure as a wealthy citizen in his native Argentina. Maidana made a lot of money from his two fights against Floyd Mayweather Jr.
Marcos “El Chino” Maidana continues his hard work for his comeback. #Boxing #Maidana #ChinoMaidana #MarcosMaidana pic.twitter.com/f1BXl3Gu2i
— Sean Zittel (@Sean_Zittel) March 23, 2019
Is Maidana broke?
Some boxing fans believe Maidana’s sole reason for making a comeback is that he’s financially broke. However, that’s unlikely the case. The lure of a nice payday against the 50-ish Cali is obviously hard or Maidana to resist.
If Maidana looks good in beating Cali, it’s believed that he’ll return to boxing. He can still make a lot of money if he can land a fight against one of the top names.
A rematch with Adrien ‘The Problem’ Broner would be the most logical fight for Maidana to take. Seven years ago, Maidana defeated Broner by a 12 round unanimous decision in December 2013 to rip away his WBA World welterweight title.
Going into that fight, Broner was undefeated, and many boxing fans believed that he would have little trouble defeating Maidana. The Argentinian had lost three times in his career before meeting up with Broner. Maidana had come up short against Andriy Kotelnik, Amir Khan, and Devin Alexander. Those fighters had shown how to get the better of Maidana by using movement.
Broner failed to follow the blueprint, and enhance his chances of winning by fighting with his back against the ropes. With Broner trapped against the ropes, Maidana pummeled him with power shots and dropped him twice in the fight. Although Broner still well and made it close, Maidana was the clear winner at the time.
Maidana left a lot of money on the table
In Maidana’s next fight, Floyd Mayweather chose to avenge Broner’s defeat by taking on the hard-hitting KO artist. What was interesting about the match was how Mayweather fought the same way Broner had against Maidana by fighting with his back against the ropes.
Mayweather was trying to prove a point that he could still beat Maidana even when using the same severely flawed game plan that Broner had used. Maidana punished Mayweather, and some believe the judges gave him a raw deal. It was close enough to go either way, but the more popular fighter Mayweather got the nod.
Maidana made a mistake of retiring after his second fight with Mayweather, as he could have made a lot more money if he’d stuck around all these years. Even if Maidana never won another world title, the paydays he would have received against the top 147-pound fighters would have been considerable.
Maidana went through what Andy Ruiz Jr. is dealing with now in becoming wealthy overnight and losing motivation to train. Yeah, it’s easy for us to say that Maidana SHOULD have continued fighting after his consecutive losses to Mayweather, but we didn’t get the big money that he did.
He felt that there no reason for him to continue fighting. Perhaps Maidana didn’t like the ideas of making considerably less money fighting contenders than what he had made in his two fights with Mayweather. Eventually, Maidana would have gotten considerable paydays in matches against the top welterweights. It would have been worthwhile for him to stick it out with his career.