NANUET, New York – Where David Malul grew up, there were no boxers for him to look up to. Born in Brooklyn and raised in an affluent section of New York’s Jamaica, Queens, Malul was surrounded by doctors, lawyers and, like his father, real estate investors. The decision for Malul to get into boxing as a 16-year-old was not well received by his family and community, but it was one he knew he had to make in order to live the life he believes he is meant to live.
“Every single day,” said the 22-year-old Malul when asked if people second-guessed his boxing dream when he started in the sport.
“But now a lot of them became fans. That's how it starts off. It's very hard to do something that, where you come from, nobody does. So it's a lot of self-belief. It's a lot of self-talk. But you got to be strong, and you got to say, ‘This is what I'm doing, whether you like it or not. You can support me or you can't, but this is what I want to do, and we're going to come out on top doing it.’”
Now, as a 3-0 (2 KOs) professional boxer, Malul gets questioned about his choices far less often. He will take another significant leap of faith on November 13, when Malul not only headlines a card at Melrose Ballroom in the Astoria section of Queens but also will promote it under his own King David Promotions banner. His opponent in the four-round welterweight fight will be Colin Huntington, 3-6 (2 KOs), of Kalamazoo, Michigan.
For Malul, his fascination with boxing started as a young boy, watching fights on TV, placing a heavy bag against his wall and imitating the moves of his favorite boxers, Mike Tyson and Floyd Mayweather Jnr. He had his first amateur fight in 2022, losing a unanimous decision, but by that point, he was hooked. The experience taught him just how committed to the sport he truly was. In defeat, he learned just how important winning was going to be to him.
“They say losses in life are important because they teach you something,” Malul said. “So in my first fight, I actually lost. Now that I look back at it, I'm like, I didn't train nearly as hard as I should have for that fight.
“My parents didn't want me to do it. They saw me lose. I was bleeding from my nose. They saw their son getting hurt in the ring. I was like, I got to gain their trust. How do I gain their trust? I have to gain their trust by winning, and continue to train harder than I should have trained [for my first fight].”
Malul didn’t do much losing after that, scoring a stoppage in his next fight three months later and making it deep into the 2024 New York Ring Masters Championships in the 147lbs novice division. After losing a decision in his 11th fight (which he thinks he should have won), Malul and his team made the decision it was time to take the headgear off and go pro.
“The next day,” trainer Michael Stallete said of when they decided to turn pro. “We never looked back from that fight, because in his heart, he knew and we all knew he won.
“We knew, being in the business and the pros, that David's a ticket-seller. He's a very entertaining, come-forward fighter, and we knew, with the pieces that we have, with how David fights, that this is a grand slam home run, and he saw the vision. His parents said, ‘OK, you know what? If you believe, then we believe.’”
It didn’t take long for Malul’s fighting spirit to be tested as a pro.
In his professional debut, which took place in September 2024, against Lucien Hannah in Huntington, New York, Malul had to get off the canvas twice in the first round before knocking out his taller opponent in the same round. Malul’s two subsequent fights have been less dramatic, as he knocked out Zachary Davis in three rounds and shut out Shaquille Rushing.
As an Orthodox Jew, Malul is expressly forbidden to use technology or work during the Sabbath (from sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday), so he has had to find unique workarounds on the boxing schedule. In the amateurs, if Malul had a fight scheduled for Saturday night, he would sleep in empty apartments that were owned by his boss and then walk to the gym where he trained.
“Maybe a friend would stop by and check if I’m OK, but other than that, I would sleep in the Bronx,” remembers Malul.
To chase his boxing dream, Malul continues to make difficult sacrifices, driving about 90 minutes each way – across two bridges – to Main Street Boxing, located in a posh shopping center in Nanuet, New York. He trains 2-3 times a day, waking up at 6 a.m. for his six-mile runs. In all, he sometimes works out up to four hours a day.
On top of that, now Malul also has promotional worries to keep in mind, though matchmaker Diana Rodriguez and Stallete are part of the team that take a lot of those worries off his plate. Still, Malul handles a lot of the tasks personally, like driving all over the city to drop off tickets to fans who want to buy them.
“It's a lot of work,” he said. “I always say, you don't want to get lost in the sauce. Your No. 1 job is to train to be a boxer. You don't want to let anything come ahead of that.”
It’s a difficult schedule, but it’s the only way for him to achieve what he dreams of.
“David does not come from an inner city,” Stallete said. “David trains like he has nothing. He trains like he has nothing in his life, because to him, it’s like ‘I have nothing.’”
Said Malul: “It’s just my passion for the sport. I feel like everything else is really external. There's got to be something internal that drives you.
“What drives me is becoming a champion one day, and the love for the sport.”
Ryan Songalia is a reporter and editor for BoxingScene.com and has written for ESPN, the New York Daily News, Rappler, The Guardian, Vice and The Ring magazine. He holds a Master’s degree in Journalism from the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism and is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at ryansongalia@gmail.com or on Twitter at @ryansongalia.