So continues our marathon coverage of one of the biggest bouts of 2014, Floyd Mayweather vs. Marcos Maidana, on May 3 on Showtime Pay-Per-View. Previously: the basics of Mayweather-Maidana; TQBR Radio on Mayweather-Maidana; the undercard, previewed; keys to the fight. Next: preview and prediction.
Floyd Mayweather’s latest opponent is so well known that everyone knows how to spell his name. Right? Right? Oh god, who spelled it Maidan-o (via our friends at r/boxing)? Oh well, it’s still a good fight, right? Right? Well, the TQBR team, assembled around our mythical (and metaphorical) roundtable, have something to say about that, among other things.
Will Marcos Maidana win a round against Floyd Mayweather?
Jeff Pryor: I think Maidana will win a round… a round of beers from his team for having landed this payday and taking a pretty good beating for his trouble. Aside from that, I’d guess that landing anything to catch a judge’s eye is gonna be awfully tough for the Argentinian. I’ve never been too high on Maidana, seeing as I thought a withered old Erik Morales beat him. I think he’ll be gassing out by round 8 because of his sloppy technique and inefficient use of energy. With the speed gap so wide his only hope of making anything happen is to focus 100 percent of his effort on body shots. Maybe he can beat on Floyd’s arms enough to open up an elbow gash or something.
Matthew Swain: At this point in his career, Mayweather tends to start a little slower, so I can see Maidana getting credit for activity. There is also a tendency to give an underdog close rounds if he’s doing better than expected. If you put those two factors together, I think he will steal one or two early.
Sam Sheppard: No. In short. Although I don’t expect Floyd to receive a shutout on the cards. I thought there was a case to be made for Floyd winning all 12 rounds against Canelo last year (I gave him 11), so I definitely don’t see Maidana doing any better. To be honest, Floyd hasn’t definitively lost a round since he fought Cotto, so I guess in a strange way there’s no shame in being totally shut out by him?
Andrew Harrison: Wow. Is that how bad things have become? We’ll be asking whether his next opponent lands a punch on him in September. I’m sure at least one of the judges will score rounds for Maidana — the last lot found a whole bunch of them for Alvarez eight months ago (and from the few rounds I watched before nodding off, he didn’t win an exchange, never mind a round).
Patrick Connor: I tend to agree with Mr. Swain in that lately Mayweather leaves just about everyone a small opening early on in fights to actually seize a round or two, often with activity. But usually by then, even not fully warmed up, Mayweather is sharp enough to deter a whole lot of momentum for his opponents. It may truly come down to what kind of condition Maidana is in on fight night, and whether or not he’ll be able to walk through whatever early offering Mayweather has for him and mug away. And as Andrew said, if Saul Alvarez can, even in error or incompetence, snag a number of rounds from him on a card or two, Maidana should be able to as well.
Alex McClintock: Yes, Maidana will win a round, and like most of the other gents have said, it’ll be early. I’d love to predict a fight like Mayweather vs. Cotto, in which the challenger takes it to the champ throughout, but I really doubt it’s going to happen here. Instead, like a professional tennis player against a bloke off the street, Mayweather will be cautious to the point of double faulting a few times until he realises how overmatched his opponent is.
Tim Starks: Nah.
Given the long odds of a Maidana victory and the $65 price tag (standard) for the PPV, do you think we’ll see a low buy rate, at least by Mayweather’s lofty standards?
Jeff Pryor: I would think this was always going to be a let down, seeing as Floyd’s last PPV had two A-sides, with Canelo playing foil and a support bout that was as buzz-worthy as the main event in Danny Garcia-Lucas Matthysse. This undercard brings in what we now know to be Floyd’s error apparent Adrien Broner, who no one really seems to like, in a soft touch rebound fight. I’d think interest is going to be pretty modest for this one.
Matthew Swain: The HD PPV is $75, which is ludicrous. I tend to agree with Jeff that we’ll see a drop just because Maidana has so much lower name recognition than Canelo did. I could see this one doing better than expected, though. I imagine that there is a group of people that think that Maidana’s victory over Broner is somehow indicative of how he will fare against Mayweather, and that could bring in a few extra buys. That’s nonsense, of course, but it might give the sales a bump. Overall, though, I think this one will be somewhere near a million buys, which is fantastic for anyone not named Floyd Mayweather.
Sam Sheppard: I really hope so. I’m sick of Floyd holding the sport hostage by standing on the shoulders of Showtime’s PR machine. I’m glad very few people are buying into the idea that Maidana is a worthy challenger. He’s not, and he never has been. He’s just the best of the bunch that Floyd is willing to fight. You only have to look at the criticism Manny Pacquiao receives off the back of fighting Juan Manuel Marquez and Timothy Bradley in his last three fights to realise that a great many fans have let Floyd’s self-serving perspective colour the way they view matchmaking at the highest level. It’s about time it stopped.
Andrew Harrison: I don’t know any longer. I mean, they hand pick these guys who have long odds and little chance, saddle the fight with a god awful tag line (“The Moment” sounds like a Bette Midler curtain closer) and sell it by depicting Floyd as a cross between Michael Jackson and Kim Kardashian. And yet the American public will continually stump up to watch a mismatch. Go figure.
Patrick Connor: Yes, I think we will. Just about everyone outside of those tied to the promotion is being honest about the fight having a sub-par undercard, for starters. Past that, though it’s nice to see Marcos Maidana get a good payday and opportunity, he simply actually given a chance to win by very few people, and he’s not a huge draw as is. That will probably be reflected in a slightly lower buy rate. I’m sure the card will make money, just not on the scale of the Canelo fight.
Alex McClintock: All I can say is that I’m a sucker and I’ll still buy it. I think there’s a pretty large group out there that will buy every Mayweather fight, no matter what, because he’s one of the best athletes on the planet. Because of them, this’ll do better than Pacquiao vs. Bradley II (if the final numbers are ever released), and I suspect that in the context of the “cold war,” that’s the only statistic that matters.
Tim Starks: I expect we’ll see the lowest buy rate of any Floyd fight since 2007. Hispanic fighters with non-Mexican or non-Puerto Rican heritages (with rare exceptions like Roberto Duran) never move figures in the United States. The promotion started late, as late as the Robert Guerrero fight, and we saw how that turned out. There is zero of the usual level of buzz for this fight, to the point that it’s being overshadowed by the Golden Boy’s Civil War within the Cold War, and to the point where Mayweather and Oscar De La Hoya are trying to get themselves injected into bigger stories like what’s happening with the Los Angeles Clippers. Maidana is the most hopeless betting underdog Mayweather has faced in forever. The price hike comes too closely on the heels of the most recent price hike, which people accepted begrudgingly. Down undercard compared to the Canelo undercard. We don’t really know what kind of numbers Mayweather-Guerrero did, but it was at least in the ballpark of 1 million. Mayweather-Ricky Hatton did 920,000. Book me for around 900,000, no worse than 800,00, just because Floyd vs. anyone sells that many.
I never realised before, but according to All Access, Floyd Mayweather is very rich and buys a lot of things. Is there any item or service that you would actually enjoy watching Mayweather buy?
Jeff Pryor: I’d love to see Floyd go to the DMV to renew his license. It’s probably the one thing he can’t pay someone to do for him; you just gotta go and wait in person. Otherwise I guess I’d have liked to see him write the check when he bought his weight advantage against Juan Manuel Marquez by not meeting the agreed to contracted weight. Just pre-planning to pay the penalty so you can massively outweigh your opponent without trying to cut weight at all — that’s definitely G.O.A.T. level stuff.
Matthew Swain: At this point I would rather watch a Girls marathon than see Mayweather spend his money or show off his cars.
Sam Sheppard: I’d like to see him shopping for Leonard Ellerbe’s birthday present. If only to witness how little thought Floyd puts into it, and how disproportionately prideful his lovestruck stooge is upon receipt. #TheMoment when Ellerbe holds their embrace a little too long would be worth all those hours of Bugattis and white paint.
Andrew Harrison: A personality – maybe a bit of happiness? Mooching about with those concubines while fixating on wealth, trotting out his familiar, wooden lines, peacocking in clubs and being unable to connect with his kids on All Access depicted Floyd as an almost pitiful figure.
Patrick Connor: A total memory implant vacation, like from the original Total Recall. You know, guns, aliens, abdominal mutants, guys with faces that look like sexual organs, a woman with three breas-… No. There’s not really anything I’d enjoy watching Floyd Mayweather buy. Sam’s idea about seeing him buy Leonard Ellerbe a birthday present is damn solid, though.
Alex McClintock: The LA Clippers. (Read: No, I’ve seen Mayweather buy everything already).
Tim Starks: Just reading about him buying Chili Cheese Fritos in prison really made me want to see him in prison overall, like a ghost following him around for the whole time so I could know whether he really got that rib injury while trying to grab some lotion. But witnessing the purchase of the Fritos is secondary to the urge to prison-shadow him because I’d be laughing at everything that happened to him in prison. Really, anything I can think of wanting to watch him purchase is secondary to WHY he’s purchasing it. Hemorrhoid cream because he has hemorrhoids, walking into a payday cash advance store after he loses his fortune post-retirement, that kind of thing.
