When Marcos Maidana knocked down Adrien Broner twice last December en route to a decision victory, he landed on Floyd Mayweather’s radar as a possible opponent in May. Mayweather set up a poll between Maidana and long thought front-runner to land the May fight, Amir Khan. Although Khan won the Mayweather poll, Maidana was chosen as the opponent.
Mayweather held a press conference during the Canelo-Angulo fight weekend and was in a very nice mood given compliments to the fighters in attendance, especially to Robert Garcia and his team. Garcia will be on the opposite side of the ring come May 3rd, but wasn’t surprised at the respect shown by Mayweather.
“Mayweather has been very respectful to me since we were fighting and we were champions in 98. He’s always been very professional to me and my team. I can’t bad mouth him,” Garcia said to ThaBoxingVoice.com
Pleasantries aside, Garcia knows his task at hand. Although it is not an easy one, to him it’s also not impossible.
“Come may 3rd we are trying to give him his 1st loss. It’s going to be tough but I think we’ll have the game plan in place to give him a tough time, to give him his 1st loss. You know, no one’s ever beat him and no one’s even come close to beating him. So we have to make things hard and come out with a good game plan to make it happen,” stated Garcia
Maidana beat Broner to earn the fight and at the time, Broner to himself and some of boxing public was the heir apparent to the Mayweather throne. After his loss, the change was instant.
Garcia still sees similarities in the two fights with Broner and now Mayweather; especially when it comes to not many giving Maidana chance to pull off the upset.
“I think there are similarities. “A lot of people before the fight with Broner, everyone was saying Broner could be,Robert Garcia will be the next Mayweather. I think Mayweather himself said that he was going to pass the torch to Broner. There were a lot of similarities. After the fight, everyone’s opinions changed. Now Broner was never going to be the same, Broner was never going to be as good as Mayweather. I just think Maidana was just too much For Broner and the way Maidana is fighting and training, I think we could do the same for Mayweather.
