"The obvious alternative [to Tarrasch who decided to withdraw from a match with Lasker] was to defend the title against Maroczy. Once again negotiations were started, and an agreement was reached and published in the 1905 volume of Lasker's Chess Magazine. All the chess world was eagerly looking forward to an exciting struggle between Lasker and the Hungarian grandmaster; and there was widespread disappointment when Maroczy cancelled the arrangement at the last moment."

It may have been money. Around that time it was not an easy matter to find somebody/anybody eager to "bet" against Dr.Lasker. At the time, between 1896- 1902, the score between the two was +3 -1 =2 in Dr.Lasker's favour.

Overall, Maroczy's results by 1905 pale in comparison with Lasker's.

There is an interesting observation by G.Marco made around that same time:

"It is remarkable, and deserves a special mention that the great masters, such as Pillsbury, Maroczy and Janowsky play against Lasker as though hypnotized."

<Maroczy's nature is an artistic one, at once kind and lofty. A small example: Marshall is in terrible time trouble and he, Maroczy, lets his own clock run on for an hour so that he does not have to win the game through an overstepping of the time limit.>

We would have lost a classic otherwise:

<Maróczy, the young Hungarian master, is as thin as he is tall. He does not smoke; he does not drink; he plays with evident concentration of all his faculties. He has a particular manner of moving his shoulders around and staring at the board with extraordinary intensity. As regards his play, he has a kindly, persuasive way of pressing his opponent which is altogether unusual: he seems to insist that his opponent resign; when the latter is unwilling to be persuaded, the game is generally drawn. Maróczy has many draws in his total, [...].>

Source: "La Stratégie", 15 July 1899

In a written tribute to Maróczy (http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/...), Capablanca mentions of a match between Maróczy and the then-Hungarian-champion Géza Nagy, in which Maróczy totally destroyed Nagy.

Wikipedia tells me the match ended +5-0=3, and occurred in 1927/8.

Yet I can't find any games of that match.
I only found one (1) game between them, from ChessBase's Database, dated 1924, being a 39-move draw.

Description: <He was an ample six feet of bone and skin especially skin. His skin, which hung loosely in innumerable ripples like that of a Chinese Shar-Pei dog, seemed roomy enough to accommodate two people of his size. Though as a young man he tried but failed to grow a mustache, he did manage to accumulate a surfeit of black hair, which silvered a bit toward the end of his life. Mary Bain, whose guest Maróczy was for a while in New York, remembers the day he had his hair cut; a memorable occasion merely because it was so rare. He had small, deep-set eyes that sparkled with energy, prominent cheekbones, a broad mouth, and a mighty set of teeth that must have been the despair of dentists. His cadaverous frame was fortunately supported by a pair of enormous feet, which, despite his old-fashioned clothes that ballooned like sails, kept him upright in the strongest wind. He moved very slowly, and talked even more slowly, especially in such difficult languages as German and English. He thought exclusively in Hungarian, and although he struggled hard to make the complicated linguistic switches, he always sounded Hungarian. Playing bridge, he never won the "rabber," as did Bogoljubow, but always the "rebbey.">

Regarding the WC match against Dr. Lasker: <That plan emerged soon after the tournament at Cambridge Springs 1904. New York chess circles tried to raise the money for the match stakes, but failed. In time, Maróczy was grateful both for the effort and for its failure. He realized that Lasker would have been too much for him he had always felt handicapped when facing a heavy smoker.>

Regarding the pause he made and the comeback after WW2: <Maróczy was forced to live in exile for some seven years. Somehow he had become compromised during the Communist revolution that shook Hungary in 1919. To imagine Maróczy as a revolutionary, and a Communist one at that, is completely ridiculous. He would never knowingly break the law or abet any kind of law-breaking. The only explanation for his difficult situation is that he must have fallen into some sort of political trap, perhaps by signing a petition the portent of which he failed to appreciate. He was naive enough to have done that.

"The first game known to feature the Maróczy Bind was Swiderski-Maróczy, Monte Carlo 1904.[1] Oddly, no games are known where Maróczy played it as White."

He does have a very famous anti-Sicilian win, but I was surprised to see that it's not a Maroczy Bind by any stretch of the imagination.

<The White position is still a little better, but that is not enough to win against Capablanca.>

-- Annotation by Maroczy