Paulie Malignaggi admits the idea of bracing life as an ex-fighter is a challenge.
Malignaggi won a violent bareknuckle bout against Tyler Goodjohn in Leeds last weekend and has seen fighters struggle to accept life after boxing.
“There are moments where you’re fine retired, but then there’s moments where you’re saying, ‘You know, I’m good.’ It comes and goes and then there’s moments where you’re thinking, ‘Man, I can do this.’ And I fought it off for a while. I had other offers in the years since and I turned them down and I thought I could separate it. I mean, I did separate it because for a time the offers stopped coming because people start to realize, ‘Okay, he’s turning down everything. He’s not one of these that’s gonna accept these’ but in the back of my mind It was always difficult. It was always difficult to not accept them but I was trying to make a change in my life.”
New Yorker Malignaggi, 45 next month, admitted that his window for competition is closing, but he said he was surprised that – as a fighter – one of the things he missed most was training camps.
“Getting in shape, I thought I didn’t miss making weight and all that other stuff. But as I was doing it, I felt so good to get myself back together, and just being more mature and regimented,” he said. “I actually was telling myself I didn’t know I missed this but I missed this, too. I actually missed this. I miss making my body feel this and being mentally so focused that you’ve got to sleep at this time, you’ve got to work out, then you’ve got to take a nap, then you’ve got to sleep and you’ve got to eat at this time and you see the results forming and I missed that whole process. I didn’t think I’d miss that. I thought that was one thing I would never miss. I missed that and then, of course, the other things that everybody will tell you they miss is the adulation, the fanfare, the roar the crowd, the adrenaline rush of that danger lurking – but you can handle it. It’s a little bit of everything.
“Of course, the result [of training camp] is looking great, but the process I thought I would hate the process. I hated the process [because it was tough] and I was going through the process I found myself I didn’t say enjoying it because it’s not really an enjoyable process, but I had missed it. I had missed it because it comes with a mental psychology as well. It’s not just a physical thing. It’s a physical thing that your body’s changing because you’re doing the work. But the mental psychology and discipline, everything, I actually missed that and that was that was something that I didn't expect.”
Malignaggi is now a chief analyst for ProBox TV, and while some fighters covet that transition into the few full-time media roles that exist for them, Malignaggi admits that the flashing red light for a live broadcast does not come close to replacing the buzz of fighting.
“Analysis never replaces it because you’re never the star,” he admitted. “The fighters are the stars in there and rightfully they should be. So it’s never about you. It’s never about you as an analyst. As an analyst, your job is to make the fighters be the stars and make the fighters look good when they deserve it and call things out when they don’t deserve it. It’s not really about stardom while being the ‘talent [trade description on an on-air analyst]’. Talent is actually the athlete, not the pundit.”
And Paulie knows well that fighters still look back on their careers rather than look ahead to what’s next.
“Living in the past makes you depressed sometimes,” he admitted. “Nostalgia, we love the past. I love the past. But if you get too caught up in it, you’d be depressed and that's why I think fighters sometimes get depressed when they retire. It’s days gone by that never come back. I want to be able to look back at it and at least have some satisfaction. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to be fully satisfied because a person with high-level goals is never fully satisfied. But I hope to be able to look back at it and have some satisfaction. Sometimes I look back at it and I'm not satisfied enough. Maybe if I can accomplish just a little bit more it may be able to make that process of leaving a little bit softer on me.”
