Showtime: All Access Mayweather vs Maidana 2 Full Episode 2

By Boxing News - 09/07/2014 - Comments

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By Chris Williams: Here is last Saturday night’s Showtime All Access: Mayweather vs. Maidana 2 episode 2. The episode showed some of what I feel is some edginess on the part of Marcos Maidana (35-4, 31 KOs) as the fight date comes closer for his rematch with WBA/WBC welterweight champion Floyd Mayweather Jr (46-0, 26 KOs) at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas, Nevada.

What jumps out at you in the episode, besides Maidana’s lack of confidence, is how thin he’s gotten since the last time he fought Mayweather. Maidana looks like he’s taken off at least 10 pounds of muscle mass, possibly even more.

This goes with what his trainer Robert Garcia has been talking about in wanting Maidana to be leaner and lighter in hopes that he’ll have better stamina and will be able to fight harder for the full 12 rounds. I believe this is a mistake on Garcia and Maidana’s part, because his weight, power and size advantage were the main things that he had going for him last time against Mayweather.

Maidana came into the ring at 165 to Mayweather’s 150. If you take that weight advantage away then all you’re left with is a slow and weak Maidana. It won’t matter if he’s able to fight hard for 12 rounds this time, because if he has no pop in his punches, he’s going to be easy pickings for Mayweather.

“In the first fight we made a mistake in bringing him in too heavy,” Garcia said about Maidana. “His punches weren’t as fast, weren’t as crisp. I think Maidana slowed down a lot.”

Maidana’s punches were powerful last time, and they were as slow as they always were. Maidana has never been a fighter with good hand speed, and it’s surprising that Garcia doesn’t know this. He was no slower than he’d ever been in the past. He was powerful and that helped him for the first 6-8 rounds of the fight. But of course, he ran out of gas in the last 4 rounds and this enabled Mayweather to sweep the last quarter of the fight.

“I think last time he [Maidana] was taking it a little big lighter, because I feel he’s a lot stronger this time,” Mikey Garcia said after sparring with Maidana. “I think he’s a lot more confident in himself also.”

I don’t see Maidana as being stronger than he was last time. In looking at the sparring he did last night on the All Access: Mayweather vs. Maidana 2 episode and comparing it to how Maidana looked in sparring Mikey last time he helped prep him for the first fight against Mayweather, I believe Maidana was a lot stronger back then than he is now. Maidana was walking through Mikey’s shots the last time and just bludgeoning him.

In last night’s episode, Maidana wasn’t able to walk through Mikey like he’d done before. That tells me that Maidana has gotten too light. He’s taken too much mass off for this fight thinking that it’ll improve his game. It may improve his stamina, and that’s still not a given, but it’s not going to improve his game.



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