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Food For Thought On Malignaggi...
Lets not make the mistake we made with Lacy-Calzaghe, and write off the one we havent seen, so firstly here is a clip of Malignaggi.
Pauli Malignaggi In Action....
From the clip you immediately see a completely unique style, one that at least I have never seen before. He uses the whole shoulder roll style and mixes it with a bit of his own style, and look at the effect its having. He is avoiding punches, and succesfully countering, even smothering his opponent with shots. He gives his opponents a small target to hit, as he stands virtually side on often bending down to quickly avoid shots and fire back with quick shots. The problem being that his shots dont have the reputation of being harmful shots, but who is ruling out a UD?
You can see from the clip he pressures on and off, succesfull with both styles, however he tends to box off the back foot generally. Now a defensive fighter, who boxes off the backfoot can cause problems, especially for someone who believes in their power like Cotto does. He draws his opponents onto shots with shuffles backwards and then as he thinks he has the edge never fails to fire less than 3 shots with a slight pivot at the end of it all to neutralise any counters.
If Malignaggi has worked hard in the gym, and gone with his strengths, whilst training towards Cotto's weaknesses, he has a legit chance... Dont get me wrong though, I still believe Cotto has the overall advantage given his experience against slightly higher level fighters, and good body work, ring movement etc etc.
It depends which style is going to take the fight. If Malignaggi can pull off his whole defensive roll's and make use of his speed and defense we may see an upset. If Cotto stamps his authority early on, then we may see Malignaggi getting completely thrown off his gameplan which is clearly to outbox Cotto even though he recently claimed he will knock him out.
Its just a thought guys... Im not a "Cotto Hater" or any of that stuff, but im just giving the boy props for what he does do, and I thought I would give my opinion of him going into the biggest fight of his career.
I guess what im saying is dont make the mistake of writing Malignaggi off...
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