by David P. Greisman
Three words came from Paulie Malignaggi again and again in a conversation about his future. The questions were coming before he’d had a chance to find the answers.
He didn’t know who he wanted to fight next. He didn’t know exactly what it was that motivated him to keep fighting. He didn’t know if he would be able to go through another long and grueling training camp. He didn’t even know if he was going to fight again.
He knew that he had a lot to think about. And he knew that if he were to choose to continue on with his career, then 2016 would be his final year as a professional prizefighter.
He’d considered retiring before, in 2014 when Shawn Porter hurt Malignaggi far worse than anyone had hurt him before and the consequences of that brutal knockout lingered long afterward in the form of headaches and nausea. But then the post-concussion symptoms went away and the competitive urge returned.
He mentioned potentially leaving the sport in early August 2015 after losing via technical knockout to Danny Garcia, when he couldn’t perform to the level he expected of himself.
“I’m probably not fighting again,” he’d said immediately afterward. “You hate to make an emotional decision.”
But then came an opportunity to fight in Italy, where his parents were from and where he was raised as a small child. After that came a chance to fight for the European title, a belt he’d dreamed of having and still wanted even after capturing world titles at junior welterweight and welterweight. That bout didn’t happen. He traveled to London anyway, fought on Dec. 12 and won.
The two consecutive victories shouldn’t mean as much as the two straight losses. There’s a big difference between beating Laszlo Fazekas (27-21-1) and Antonio Moscatiello (20-2-1) after being stopped by Porter and Garcia. But it’s not just who he beat. It’s how he felt, particularly against Moscatiello. That win made him wonder.
“I feel like I can box very well still. I have a very good sense of timing when I get the proper amount of sparring. That’s why I didn’t retire after the Garcia fight,” Malignaggi told BoxingScene.com last week. He said he hadn’t gotten much sparring before the Garcia fight — about 20 rounds in total, a number that was due in large part to the cut he’d suffered in May prior to a bout with Danny O’Connor for what initially would’ve been his comeback.
“I’ve always been very heavily reliant on sparring. I’m a reflex type of fighter. I always rely on my eyes and my reflexes,” Malignaggi said. “People may look at it as an excuse from me. Maybe it is. Maybe it isn’t. After every performance, a fighter has to look at his or her performance. I assessed what I did. It has nothing to do with excuses. It has more to do with ‘How can I be better?’ I felt like there was probably a chance I’d be better if I would still get the proper amount of sparring in a training camp. Anytime I’ve gotten good sparring in training camp, I’ve always been able to give it an honest effort.”
“We took a short notice fight in September [against Fazekas], which we also didn’t get a lot of sparring for. I wanted to make sure I did it right this time around [for Moscatiello, whom Malignaggi outpointed by a wide unanimous decision]. We had plenty of time to prepare and plenty of sparring. The punches were flying out a lot more. It was easier to pull the trigger because I was pulling the trigger in the gym. Some of the qualities are still there.”
A fighter who loses the way Malignaggi lost to Porter and Garcia must assess himself critically and honestly. He needs his team members and loved ones to do the same. That’s not always easy to do. Malignaggi felt he wasn’t himself against Garcia. He had to figure out whether the reason he wasn’t himself was because he was no longer capable of being so.
The conclusion far too many fighters reach is one based on delusion. Malignaggi does not believe that to be the case with him.
“I don’t know if I’m lying to myself as to whether I am sticking around too long or not. We’ll see. This training camp told me a lot,” he said. “I felt like I reacted very well to the punches that came my way. I felt like I was very reactive in my counterpunching ability, my jabbing ability, my sense of distance. I feel like if I give myself an honest training camp, I can still compete.
“I can’t beat everybody in the world. I can still beat a good number of fighters in the world and compete at a high level,” he said. “I would still welcome a rematch with Garcia or [Adrien] Broner. Maybe I never get them. If I never get them, that’s fine. I still think those are fights that under different circumstances I can compete much better. Obviously there’s guys in the welterweight division that maybe I can’t compete against. I don’t know.”
There were those three words again. And they returned over the course of the conversation, not only regarding whom he could face on fight night and how he would do, but also concerning what it would take to give himself the best of chances against the best of opponents.
“I don’t know that I like being in training camp for two or three months. The thing about a proper training camp is that it lasts long,” Malignaggi said. “I don’t know if, with the work that I do on television, how much I can fully dedicate to a full training camp. I was able to do it this time, but obviously I wasn’t able to do it other times.”
Malignaggi has become a respected boxing analyst on television broadcasts. He works for Showtime and has expanded to other networks as well, doing commentary for the “Premier Boxing Champions” shows on CBS and Fox Sports 1. He’s also traveled overseas on occasion for broadcasts; he even called the main event of the London card on which he fought, the heavyweight bout between Anthony Joshua and Dillian Whyte.
That can keep him very busy and in transit. He detailed a couple of weeks in September, when he went from a “PBC on CBS” card in Texas to a Fox Sports 1 show in California, then went to Las Vegas for Floyd Mayweather’s final fight, and then jetted across the country to a Fox Sports 1 broadcast outside of Pittsburgh. A brief return home was followed by a trip across the Atlantic Ocean, where he held a very quick weeklong training camp with a patchwork team for the Fazekas fight in Italy.
For the Moscatiello fight, Malignaggi was back with Sherif Younan, the trainer who cornered him when he fought Juan Diaz twice in 2009 and Amir Khan in 2010. Malignaggi had trained with Eric Brown before, but he saw the distance required to travel to work with Brown as making it more difficult for him to get the kind of camp he wanted. Younan is local. He’ll stay with Younan if he continues to fight.
Those decisions to fight of course come before the rigors of training begin, before he starts to drop from as much as 170 or 175 pounds down to the 147-pound limit of the welterweight division. He can’t go lower, and he isn’t built to fight against heavier foes.
“When I eat and I’m nice and fat and eat and drink and put on the weight and I’m comfortable, I think about taking on a fight and I’m very comfortable in that moment and think I can do it,” Malignaggi said. “But then when I’m making weight in the last few weeks and I’m draining myself down, I hate myself for making that choice. In the moment the offers come my way, the money sounds good, the fights sound good, everything sounds good, but you’re also on a full stomach and you’re fully hydrated. Come the last couple weeks before a fight, there’s moments when you’re wondering if you can make the weight, and if you’re going to feel strong at the weight if you do make it. … So much goes into it and you start questioning whether it’s still such a good idea.
“A piece of me is sick of making weight, a piece of me is sick of the extended training camps,” he added later. After all, he’s fought as a pro for more than 14 years now, and he competed as an amateur before that. “It’s very difficult. I’m a clean fighter. I don’t believe a lot of fighters in this sport are clean. At 35 years old, training like that takes a hard toll on me.”
Malignaggi doesn’t want to be like Evander Holyfield, who continued to fight long past his best days in a fruitless pursuit of regaining the heavyweight championship. He doesn’t want to be like Roy Jones Jr., who boxes on despite being a shell of himself and was recently knocked out in frightening fashion in Russia by a lower-tier cruiserweight.
“I said before that’d never be me. I fully intend to make sure that’ll never be me,” Malignaggi said. “At a certain point, nature is nature. You can’t beat nature. I don’t care what anybody says or what anybody intends to accomplish. Nature is nature. And Ii you’re a natural fighter, you’re not going to beat nature. Having said that, I look at those guys who don’t want to retire and who put themselves in harm’s way, and finally they have to be retired by other people, by taking away their licenses. I can’t see myself going that route. I guess when those guys were young they couldn’t see themselves going that route either, so you never say never. I would feel really stupid if I ended in that situation”
He then reaffirms that 2016 will be his last year if he decides to continue. He thinks these two wins have put him closer to being in position for another significant fight sometime in the next 12 months. And he would prefer something significant, something that would motivate him mentally and, as a result, help push him physically.
“I still love fighting guys that people think I can’t beat,” Malignaggi said. “And obviously I don’t always beat them, as my record shows. But I love taking on guys where it’s a challenge. I like going into a fight and knowing that I’m not supposed to win it. I like going into a fight and knowing that people think I can’t do it. Sometimes they’re right. I like that. I like testing myself. I enjoy that part of it. I get more up for those type of fights than I do for fights where everybody thinks I should win.”
Some fighters continue on because they need money. That’s not Malignaggi; he has a career in broadcasting, a career that would be in danger if he stepped in the ring with the wrong opponent.
It’s also difficult to let go of something that meant so much. It’s hard to accept when it’s time. Malignaggi knows his end is near. He wants it to be on his terms. Every boxer does. Few actually have that luxury.
There’s ego involved as well. That’s understandable. Boxing takes a belief that you can be faster, smarter, stronger, better. The journey begins in the relative anonymity of small amateur shows and can lead to large crowds and international audiences.
“One of the reasons I also chase all this is because I have an opportunity with PBC and [powerful adviser] Al Haymon to get opportunities that early on in my career I didn’t have,” Malignaggi said. “I remember craving for the big fights and big moments, and the only fights I could get were in other people’s hometowns or on other promoter’s dates as the B-side, like the Miguel Cotto fight or the Juan Diaz fight.
“We had to scratch and claw for my own date. I remember winning the world title on HBO [against Lovemore N’dou] and HBO not giving me a date. I had to wait seven months. Even though I won my first world title fight with a dominant performance, HBO would not put me back on, and having to wait seven months to make my first title defense for short money [against Herman Ngoudjo on Showtime]. I always felt I was one of the most marketable fighters in boxing in my prime.
“I feel like now that I have such a great team around me, obviously the cornerstone is Al Haymon, maybe I’m chasing something that I wish I had when I was younger. Maybe I’m past those prime years, but now that it’s here I try to chase it as much as I can. Maybe it’s a pipe dream. I don’t know. But if it’s there, and if it’s there and it makes sense to me, I can still chase it. Maybe I’m deluding myself and I’m in denial. Maybe I’m not.
“I do know one thing: I’ve been written off before. People thought I was ruined by Miguel Cotto, that it was a beating I’d never come back from. People thought I was done when I lost to Ricky Hatton. I said ‘No, I just need to change trainers and I’ll be alright.’ And I was right again. People thought I was done after Amir Khan. I said ‘No, I just need to go up in weight.’ And I was right again.
“People thought I was done now after the Porter and Garcia losses. One more chance to write my own story. Eventually, yes, you keep trying to go against the current, and eventually the current will take you. That’s usually how it works. The critics will be right eventually. I’m just trying to prove them wrong one last time. I know eventually they’ll be right. But so far they’ve been wrong every time. I want a chance to prove them wrong one more time. Maybe they’re right this time. I don’t know. But there’s only one way to find out. If the opportunities come my way and they’re to my liking, we’ll go for it in 2016.”
“Fighting Words” appears every Monday on BoxingScene.com. Pick up a copy of David’s book, “Fighting Words: The Heart and Heartbreak of Boxing,” at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsamazon or internationally at http://bit.ly/fightingwordsworldwide. Send questions/comments via email at fightingwords1@gmail.com
