In a recent Interview with Tha Boxing Voice, Robert Garcia (Trainer of Marcos Maidana) said he his game plan would involve forcing Mayweather to stand toe-to-toe. In recent interivews Garcia has gone out of his way to point out Mayweathers lack of entertainment when it comes to pleasing the fans and has gone as far as calling him a “bitch”.
Garcia’s remarks and outburts have been aimed intentionally to get under Mayweather’s skin in the hopes of a standing battle where boxing is thrown out the window. When asked specifically by a reporter why he thinks its ‘cool’ to be hit Garcia responded with “…just like he said we are dirty well, we gotta say stuff like that too so maybe that forces him to stand in front of us to trade punches.”
I, like many others, actually believe that Mayweathers legs are almost gone. I went back the other day to watch his second fight with Castillo (which many are predicting will look similar to the Maidana rematch) and saw a youthful Mayweather that danced and glided across the ring. I don’t believe that Mayweather exits anymore, I honestly think that he makes up for his aging with the incredible skills he has and his ring IQ. There are those who predict this fight to be a complete shutout and I can see their reasoning but the old Mayweather is gone and when push comes to shove we’ve all seen how he reacts to being pressured (I.e. rewatch rounds 1-5 of their first fight).
I believe Garcia is a reasonable man and understands the talent that lays before him, I mean they’ve done this before. This time, you can tell that he will be training Maidana to go all out and leave it all in the ring. My only hope is that he does not just train for Mayweather to come to him because our assumptions, and definitely mine, could be very wrong. Mayweather might still have that beautiful ring generalship he once had but from what I saw the first time I have my doubts. I do think Robert knows what they missed the first time around he went out as far as to say, “We are going to correct those punches [missed]…we are going to be aggressive but we want to be in that ‘half distance’ but not too close…it should be effective we’ve got a good game plan”. Only time will tell. But I for one hope we see fireworks like we did this past May 3rd.
