Marcos Maidana and Floyd Mayweather (Photo: Naoki Fukuda)
Despite losing his May 3 fight against Floyd Mayweather, the stock on Marcos Maidana is as high as ever.
The rugged Argentinean came up short against Mayweather on the scorecards by way of a majority decision but he had several telling moments in the fight and performed far better than many expected he would.
One man not overly impressed is Las Vegas-based trainer Jeff Mayweather, who felt his nephew purposely chose to engage Maidana in a dog fight rather than box his way towards victory.
“I thought that Floyd made the fight entertaining and I think it was by design,” Jeff told me recently. “Because he said that’s what he was going to do. Every guy that lands four or five punches on Floyd gets way more credit than they deserve. You’re talking about a guy that three over 800 punches and missed over 600.
“Floyd threw more punches than him and landed more,” Jeff added. “That tells you basically what the fight was about. Plus, if Floyd wanted to stay in the center of the ring, he would have dominated the fight. But like I said, I think he chose to entertain the people and it made good for the fans.”
Jeff wouldn’t even go as far as to give Maidana credit for giving Floyd his toughest scrap to date.
“To be honest, the toughest fight he probably had to me was Castillo the first fight,” Jeff explained. “But Maidana, all he did was land a few overhand rights. That’s it. He never hurt Floyd. It looked good for TV, but once you go back and you watch the fight and not be caught up in the moment of the fight, you’ll see he really got dominated.”
Chris Robinson can be reached at Trimond@aol.com