By Thomas Gerbasi
When you’ve died – in a figurative sense – and come back to life, what usually results is a jaded, world-weary knowledge; a thick skin that makes you impervious to pain and resistant to all the slings and arrows that come your way. They can’t hurt you anymore, and whatever gets thrown at you simply makes you laugh.
Paulie Malignaggi would probably agree with that assessment, maybe with the exception of the laughing part. Brooklyn’s ‘Magic Man’ doesn’t laugh as much these days; it’s more a sneer or a chuckle when he comes to grips with the reality of a game that he used to love, one that saved him when he needed it the most.
But after a rollercoaster ride that included mainstream apathy, a lack of recognition within the industry, questionable decisions in and out of the ring, and a high-profile defeat to Ricky Hatton in 2008, he now looks at boxing for what it is at the end of the day - a paycheck.
“It’s past the point of frustration, so I accept it, and I just use boxing as my job,” Malignaggi told BoxingScene. “Everybody gets up in the morning and goes to work; I get up in the morning and go train.”
Yet in spite of the doom and gloom, Malignaggi has resurrected his career at the age of 29. Written off after the Hatton fight, he split with trainer Buddy McGirt, picked up Brooklyn trainer Sherif Younan, won a tune-up fight over Christopher Fernandez, and then engaged in an entertaining 12 rounder with former lightweight champion Juan Diaz in August of last year. At the end of the bout, most observers assumed Malignaggi would get the nod; he didn’t setting off a media and fan frenzy that was led by the ‘tell it like it is’ stylings of Malignaggi in front of the HBO cameras, who railed against the culture in the boxing business that took the victory away from him.
His post-fight rant worked, earning him a rematch on neutral turf against Diaz less than four months later. Again Malignaggi did enough to win, but this time he got the decision to go along with it.
“I never doubted it,” he said. “Even in the first Diaz fight, going into it, I knew there was gonna be a Paulie Malignaggi showing up in the fight that people weren’t gonna expect, because the last time they had seen me was in the Hatton fight. And I got robbed, but I think people saw that I still had a lot left, and that, along with my temper tantrum and some people helping me out, I got the rematch and I did what I had to do.”
Which brings us to Saturday night in New York City, where Malignaggi will look to win a second world junior welterweight title when he takes on England’s Amir Khan at The Theater at Madison Square Garden. For Malignaggi, now keenly aware of the ins and outs of the boxing and star-making business, Khan – a 2004 Olympic Silver medalist and bona fide star in his home country – is precisely what’s wrong with the fight game today; at least the United States version of it.
“If he was an American prospect who had been dropped five times in his career by nobodies, and then gets knocked out by a nobody, he would never have even been in a world title fight,” said Malignaggi. “They would have put him on the backburner and made him wait until better fighters got world title shots. But it’s all about connections and all about timing, and all about what nationality you are, especially in boxing. If you’re an American, it’s probably the worst thing you can be.”
“You get no support from the media, and there are a lot of haters among the fans,” he continues. “In other countries, take guys like Arthur Abraham – people don’t care how he fights; they just want to see him win. Sven Ottke was a super-popular fighter in Germany and he was boring as hell. In England you’ve got Amir Khan and all the Brits support him. But in America, you’ve got a guy like Floyd Mayweather who could be fighting a foreigner, and the building would be cheering for the foreigner. It’s tough to make it as an American, even though all the money is here and all the fame and popularity is here.”
But that’s not Khan’s fault is it? If you’re able to get that type of support and have those connections, wouldn’t that be a good thing? Malignaggi doesn’t think so, as he surmises that Khan now believes he’s better than he actually is.
“Khan doesn’t have a clue that he’s had the red carpet treatment given to him the whole time,” said Malignaggi. “He actually thinks he’s that good. I actually find it comical that this guy, who’s been down five times in his career against nobodies is suddenly, in his mind, 12 months away from a Mayweather or Pacquiao fight, and is gonna take a former world champion like myself and stop him in three rounds. Who has he stopped in three rounds that he’s gonna stop me in three rounds? He hasn’t been in there with one elite fighter yet, and some question whether I’m an elite fighter, (Laughs) but that’s another story for another day.”
And most will now write off Malignaggi’s ramblings as those of a fighter jealous about another’s success. But that would be the easy solution. Instead, look a little deeper and listen a little closer, and insert Malignaggi somewhere else but Brooklyn, USA, something that could have been possible had his family moved elsewhere after leaving Italy. Suddenly, it makes a lot more sense.
“Had my family gone to England instead of America, and I became a fighter there, you’re gonna tell me a national amateur champion, the top-ranked amateur in his weight class in his country, speaks three languages fluently, good-looking, can give you any quotes you want, and goes on to win a world championship, you’re gonna tell me I wouldn’t have been the biggest superstar in that country? Instead, I’ve got to be over here and treated like I’m some kind of a joke.”
“I hate to say it, but the American culture is a very jealous culture,” he continues. “Any successful American athlete always has his degenerate haters and critics following him. You really don’t see that too much in other countries. People really support their own blood, so to speak, and that’s how they look at it – they look at it like he’s one of us. If he makes it, we feel like we’re making it. Not in America. In America, it’s like he’s an American, I’m an American, why is he getting these opportunities and I’m not?”
Malignaggi is an American though, a proud one, and one defending his home turf against Khan, who will be fighting outside of the UK for the first time as a pro. That should be motivation enough, but being the underdog and Saturday’s B-side adds a little more incentive. King though, in his mind, is popping the Khan hype bubble. He takes particular umbrage with Khan’s claims that he has already been in deeper waters than those Malignaggi can take him into.
“Getting taken into deep waters is something Amir Khan thinks he knows about because he’s had a few Wildcard gym wars,” said an incredulous Malignaggi. “This is America – all gyms are like that. I’ve been in gym wars and fighting for that constant respect since I was 17 years old. I was involved in gym wars in Gleason’s Gym where you could have charged at the door for watching them. He thinks he’s been in deep waters, he thinks he’s been tested a little bit, but he has no idea that he’s been fighting at a certain level and there are a lot more levels to go up to get to where he thinks he is.”
Guess who wants to introduce him to that elite level? And though Khan probably won’t take credit for it, what the WBA champion may have done in a roundabout way is give Malignaggi a reason to get excited about boxing again.
“The last couple years it’s been a job to me – you get up, you go to the gym, you do your work, you do your job, just like everybody else,” he said. “But this time around, it’s actually a lot more enjoyable to train for this kid because it’s not about winning a title - I’ve been a world champion already and it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be for me – but I might probably enjoy putting a beating on this kid more than winning a title. And that really has me excited.”
Will it just be for one night only? For perhaps the first time in his life, Paulie Malignaggi is stumped.
“I don’t know,” he says, pausing for a moment. “I kinda approach it one day at a time, and I’m not sure if I’ll ever have the same excitement I had when I was younger. But I still enjoy getting in there and doing it. I get to do something for a living that not too many people can say they can do, and I’m very good at it. People want to take credit away from me and say I’m not this or that, but at the end of the day, they know my name. So I don’t know if anything can bring back the same excitement as when I was young, but I don’t think I can ever find something that brings me the rush of being in the ring in a big fight, with the crazy crowd and that atmosphere, the anticipation, and the entrance into the ring. That much I still love about it, and that’s what I’ll probably miss when I’m out.”
There’s still work to be done though, and when the bell rings tomorrow night in midtown, Paulie Malignaggi plans on showing Amir Khan the difference between being a boxer and being a fighter.
