Floyd Mayweather Edges Marcos Maidana
Photos by Tom Casino for Showtime
by Sarah Deming
Money doesn’t matter once the bell rings. On Saturday’s Showtime Pay Per View card from the MGM Grand, pound-for-pound king Floyd Mayweather, Jr. (46-0, 26 KOs) withstood a surprisingly strong challenge from welterweight Marcos “Chino” Maidana (35-4, 31 KOs), winning a majority decision and sending the tattooed slugger back to Buenos Aires without his Burger King crown.
[[MORE]]Cover at the local sports bar was $35 plus a $25 minimum, but that’s chump change to ballers like us. My homie Jean and I paid with hundred dollar bills and flushed the change down the toilet. (Just kidding, that was Adrien Broner.)
The first three barflies we interviewed had not even heard of Marcos Maidana. The Argentine champ’s chances were considered so slim going into this title unification that pre-fight hooplah had focused more than usual on Mayweather’s extracurricular antics. This was a drag, because the only way to keep loving Floyd Mayweather is to ignore everything about his personal life, like reading Ezra Pound or listening to Wagner.
Maidana had clearly been hitting the empanadas hard since the weigh-in. He entered the ring with a staggering 17-pound weight advantage over his opponent and used this to good effect, getting Mayweather against the ropes with his Robert-Garcia-enhanced jab and then leaning on him to launch body shots and clubbing overhand rights, some to the back of the head.
The second also saw good work from Maidana. As usual, Mayweather was rolling and slipping against the ropes, but he was getting hit much more than we have seen before. He got the straight right going toward the end of the round and kept working it in the third.
In the close fourth, Mayweather began moving laterally and using check hooks and jabs to the belt line to stop the charge, but he was having trouble finding distance and a head butt late in the round left him cut over the right eye and visibly upset. Cutman Rafael Garcia, to whom Mayweather gave an affectionate shout in the post-fight interview, did a great job making the injury irrelevant. We could have used him at the sports bar, as Jean had suffered a mild hand injury during the Collazo-Kahn match from a clash with a vodka gimlet.
Maidana landed a good overhand right in the fifth, taking advantage of Mayweather’s reduced visibility, and seemed inclined to follow it with a knee. Dirty fighting favored the Argentine. Many of his body shots were landing on Mayweather’s kidneys or hips.
The sixth brought more of the same, much of it contested with Floyd’s back to the ropes. There were occasional flashes of Mayweather glory – a great counter right uppercut and a lead right a bit later – but the bulk of the offense, crude as it was, came from Maidana.
This was a far rougher outing than we had bargained for, but it always is. The contrast between the richness of the buildup (pedicures with Justin Bieber, designer trunks, rap music, clowns) and the naked violence of the confrontation is what makes Floyd Mayweather’s fights so moving. The pro-Mayweather sports bar buzzed with worry. Jose, a young Dominican who’d had the foresight to bring a Poland Spring bottle filled with Patron, had $750 riding on a Mayweather victory, $250 of it on a knockout in seven rounds or less.
As though psychically aware of the over-under, Mayweather awoke in the seventh. It was his best round of the fight and signaled a momentum shift that would see him outbox Maidana through the late rounds.
Maidana tried to take it back in the eighth, landing an uppercut to the balls that severely pissed off Mayweather and returning to more of the rough stuff against the ropes, in obedience to Robert Garcia’s corner advice, “Be dirty if you have to.”
Money looked lovely from the ninth round on. He kept things in the center of the ring, placing the lead rights just where he wanted them and doing beautiful work going backwards. Every clinch felt dangerous: So many forearms and elbows, such aggression face to face. Toward the end of the eleventh the two men tumbled to the canvas in a tangle. It was a great fight, far more entertaining than anyone thought it would be.
A slick pivot into a 1,2 in the 12th had the bar crowd cheering. It was vintage Mayweather, defiant and slick. When the bell rang, most of us thought Money had squeaked it out.
Michael Pernick’s score of 114-114 was closest to the truth. Burt Clements had it 117-111 and Dave Moretti 116-112, both for Mayweather, margins that seem far too wide. Whether it was Mayweather’s 37 years catching up to him, anticlimax after his sublime showing versus Canelo Alvarez, or the strength of will of his opponent, this was a vulnerable showing that raises questions about when the Money will run out.
Jose was happy though. He had lost the over-under, but the $500 he put on Mayweather by decision would pay out $2,300. When I commented on the unusually favorable odds, he said, “Dominican barbershops are crazy.”