By Keith Idec
NEW YORK – Marcos Maidana is thankful that a large enough faction of consumers considered his May 3 fight against Floyd Mayweather Jr. competitive enough to warrant a Sept. 13 rematch at MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
Without them, in addition to Mayweather’s reluctance to consider certain opponents, Argentina’s Maidana is well aware he wouldn’t have received another seven-figure opportunity to dethrone boxing’s pound-for-pound king.
“I think I got the rematch because there was a little bit of pressure from the public,” Maidana said through an interpreter prior to a public news conference Monday in Times Square. “They pressured him into giving me the rematch. That was a big factor in getting the rematch.”
The 37-year-old Mayweather doesn’t think their first fight was particularly close, yet was more than willing to earn another $32 million for facing an opponent he already has beaten.
“I just want to give the fans what they want to see,” said Mayweather, who won a majority decision over Maidana (117-111, 116-112, 114-114). “The fans asked for it. Let’s do it again. Why not?”
Mayweather (46-0, 26 KOs) and Maidana (35-4, 31 KOs) will conclude their five-city, three-day press tour with a public news conference scheduled for noon Thursday at Pershing Square in Los Angeles. They’ll then head to their respective training camps in Las Vegas and Oxnard, Calif., where they’ll each have a little less time than normal (seven full weeks) to train before heading to Las Vegas.
Keith Idec covers boxing for The Record and Herald News, of Woodland Park, N.J., and BoxingScene.com. He can be reached on Twitter @Idecboxing.
