Sometimes as media we try to sound smart, but frankly you don’t have to be a genius to know the only way you are going to have a chance against Floyd Mayweather is swarming and volume punching. You also have to make the fight a little dirty.
All the fighters who fight Mayweather knows this, but rarely does someone execute it.
Marcos Maidana from round 1 stuck to the game plan and almost pulled it off. From a purely statistical it was volume versus accuracy.
Maidana threw 858 punches and landed 221 (the most ever against Mayweather). Mayweather only threw 426 punches, but actually landed more 230 (54%). I think the reason that Maidana lost the fight, wasn’t so much because he wasn’t accurate, but a lot of his punches weren’t clean punches. Mayweather took a lot of the punches on the shoulder, back, torso (or in his words the dick and thigh) and etc. Mayweather around the 6th round started to take control of the fight and that is what the scorecard indicated. On two cards he won 4 out last 6 rounds and on the other card 5 out of the 6 on the other.
The questions are what does this all mean?
Does it mean Mayweather is slowing down, is Maidana better than we are giving him credit for or just one of those styles make fights type of thing?
Maybe a little bit of all three. In the end, Mayweather is 37 years old, but also a boxing savant, Maidana had the same game plan he had against Adrien Broner, but Mayweather stayed calm, disciplined and relaxed. He won a clear decision, but one close enough that people would be interested in a rematch.
Mayweather says he could have made it a much easier fight, but didn’t want to bore the fans. Regardless if that is true or not, the clock is ticking, but Mayweather time on top isn’t over yet.