Malignaggi Feels His Style 'Is Kryptonite' To Garcia

By Keith Idec

Paulie Malignaggi remembers how much fresher he felt when the former junior welterweight champion moved up to welterweight late in 2010.

The Brooklyn native figures Danny Garcia is experiencing the same rejuvenation as he prepares for his welterweight debut Saturday night against Malignaggi at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center. The 34-year-old Malignaggi (33-6, 7 KOs) just doesn’t think the additional energy and strength Garcia gets from advancing to 147 pounds will be enough to help Garcia (30-0, 17 KOs) beat him in their 12-round main event (ESPN; 9 p.m. ET/6 p.m. PT).

“I think, based on the experience I had when I moved to the welterweight division, it’ll probably help him and he’ll feel better,” Malignaggi said Tuesday during a SportsCenter interview that aired on ESPN. “Not that it’s going to help him against me, because I feel like my style is going to be Kryptonite for him. But regardless, overall he’ll feel better at 147 pounds. I can remember the exact same feeling when I moved up from 140 to 147 pounds, just feeling like my body had oxygenated a little bit and was able to keep a little more energy.”

Malignaggi moved up from junior welterweight after Amir Khan (31-3, 19 KOs) stopped him in the 11th round of their May 2010 fight in The Theater at Madison Square Garden. Less than two years later, Malignaggi became a two-division champion by upsetting previously unbeaten Ukrainian Vyacheslav Senchenko (37-2, 25 KOs) by technical knockout to win the WBA welterweight title in Donetsk, Ukraine.

The Showtime/CBS commentator is a huge underdog entering his fight against the younger, undefeated Garcia, though, largely because Shawn Porter (26-1-1, 16 KOs) knocked out Malignaggi in the fourth round of his last fight 15 months ago in Washington, D.C.

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.