Maidana WON’T be be coming out of retirement

By Dan Ambrose

Boxingnews24.com

Former knockout artist and two-division world champion Marcos Maidana has decided NOT to resume his boxing career after all by coming out of retirement, according to ESPN Deportes. Earlier this week, the 35-year-old Maidana (35-5, 31 KOs) announced in a video that he wanted to fight Floyd Mayweather Jr., Saul Canelo Alvarez and Amir Khan.

The challenge from Maidana created a lot of news in the boxing world, but it failed to initiate interest on those fighter’s part in wanting to accept his challenge. Maidana looked quite heavy and badly out of shape during the brief video clip. In hindsight, perhaps it wasn’t the best idea for Maidana to call out those fighters looking as overweight as he was. Had Maidana been training and looked in shape when he made the challenge, it might have elicited a favorable response from some of them.

Maidana looked to be well over 200 pounds during the video clip. While that isn’t that heavy when you compare how out of shape former heavyweight world champion Tyson Fury was before he started his comeback, it was heavy enough to make it seem unlikely that the Argentinean would be able to take off all the weight to get back down to 147 or 160 to face the likes of Mayweather, Canelo or Khan.

“Almost everyone says they retire and come back. I want to be unique, I do not want to miss my word, I’m fine,” Maidana said to the newspaper La Nación de Argentina. “I would not go back. I would look for other opportunities. I have other businesses, other things. I retired and it’s over. Boxing is something that was left behind,” Maidana said.

In 2014, Maidana retired after losing for a second time against Floyd Mayweather Jr. Like the first fight, it was a close one. Maidana gave Mayweather a lot of problems with his heavy punches, and his aggressive come forward style of fighting. Maidana made a lot of money from his 2 fights with Mayweather. Given the a huge payday he received in those two fights, it’s understandable why Maidana would want to fight Mayweather in a third encounter. However, Mayweather would have nothing to gain in fighting Maidana. The boxing public isn’t demanding that fight, and Mayweather wouldn’t be able to sell it like he did with his mismatch against Conor McGregor in 2017. U.S boxing fans would see a third fight between Mayweather and Maidana as a money grab, and they would avoid it like the plague.

Maidana isn’t that old when you compare him to guys like 36-year-old former middleweight champion Gennady Golovkin, who is still fighting at a high level, and Bernard Hopkins. Those guys have shown that age is just a number. However, the difference is, those fighters didn’t retire for 4 1/2 years, get badly overweight, and then create a video calling out the top guys in their old weight classes. If GGG and Hopkins done something like that, they would likely be seen in the same light as Maidana is right now. Being out of the ring for over four years is hard enough to be taken seriously by the boxing fans, but when you appear to be 80 pounds overweight, it’s hard to be taken seriously. Maidana likely could take all that weight off if he wanted to badly enough, but the combination of the years of inactivity, his age, rich lifestyle, and weight loss would make unlikely that he would be able to fight at a high level. If there was interest from Canelo, Mayweather or Khan to give Maidana a fight without him having to work his way to a match against one of them, it wouldn’t likely be a problem. Maidana could come back, and do the best he could. However, for the fight to be taken seriously by the boxing public, Maidana would need to take the weight off, and fight tune-ups against good opposition to show that he’s still capable of beating world class fighters. That would be asking a lot of an older fighter coming off of a 4 1/2 layoff. The weight loss itself would be difficult for Maidana. When you take that much weight off, fighters often weakened, and not capable of fighting at the same level they once did.

Maidana says he doesn’t miss boxing. He saw it as a job, and nothing more than that.

“Nothing, it was a job, I retired,” Maidana said. “The stage is over. I’m still traveling, going to fights, but without training or going to the ring. Fights with Mayweather helped me retire early.”

Maidana has had a much better career than most boxers. Even though Maidana ended his career with consecutive defeats against Mayweather, he was able to make enough money to retire on. It’s unknown whether Maidana still has money from those fights or not. If so, then he’s in a good position to continue to live well.

During his career, Maidana had wins over Adrien Broner, Jesus Soto Karass and Victor Ortiz. Of Maidana’s five losses on record, three of the defeats were highly controversial. Maidana appeared to do enough to beat Mayweather in their first fight in May 2014, and his loss to Andriy Kotelnik in 2009 was also very questionable. You can also argue that Maidana would have beaten Amir Khan in 2010 if the referee that worked that fight hadn’t continually pulled him off of the badly hurt Amir in round 10 after he hurt him. Referee Joe Cortez seemed to be getting in between Maidana and Khan after the British fighter was badly hurt in the 10th. Khan looked helpless, but Maidana couldn’t get to him because Cortez was either pulling him away or getting in between. Cortez had been getting in between the two fighters the entire fight, and this clearly favored Khan, who needed to have Maidana at a distance for him to do well. If that same fight had taken place with a referee that stands back and lets the fighters battle, it’s very unlikely Khan would have survived the 10th round after he was from a right hand from Maidana. It appeared that Cortez changed the outcome of the fight by keeping the two fighters apart when Maidana was trying to work on the inside against the hurt Khan.