By Keith Idec

As training camp for his Sept. 13 rematch against Floyd Mayweather Jr. winds down, Marcos Maidana feels much more confident about his preparation than he did as their first fight approached.

Maidana claims that spending just five weeks with Robert Garcia at his trainer’s Oxnard, Calif., gym was a factor in the Argentine brawler wearing down during the second half of a 12-round fight Mayweather won by majority decision May 3 at MGM Grand. With his second child, a daughter they named Emilia, on the way before he met Mayweather (46-0, 26 KOs) nearly four months ago, Maidana (35-4, 31 KOs) began training camp for the biggest fight of his career in Argentina so that he could spend additional time with his wife, Mariana Zilli.

“[Losing] had a lot to do with conditioning,” Maidana said during a conference call this week. “The times when he decided to box was because I let him get away. I let him be able to box and move. I think that I did well to force him to fight because of the pressure I put on. This time around, I’m not going to get tired. I’m going to be on him from the opening bell, for the entire fight, and I think that’s going to force him to fight.”

Garcia agreed that Maidana’s conditioning wasn’t as good as it could’ve been the first time he met Mayweather. That won’t be the case again, Garcia promised, in their rematch at MGM Grand ($74.95 in HD; 8 p.m. ET/5 p.m. PT).

“We had about five weeks [together] before the first fight,” Garcia said. “Even though Chino came in already semi-in-shape, it was still not the same. This time he came here nine weeks before the fight, started training, [had a] full camp. We had a good eight weeks of training. I think it’s going to make a big difference, you know? Five weeks compared to eight weeks of training makes a difference in this type of fight. I think with everything that he’s doing and learning in camp, we should see a different fight this time.”

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.