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By Mitch Abramson - “At the end of the day, you have to judge a boxer by his skills and what he can do in the ring, and not by his hair, and at the end of the day, Paulie Malignaggi is 25-1 and he’s the IBF junior welterweight champion. And there’s only one IBF junior welterweight champion, and right now it’s Paulie Malignaggi.”
- Paulie Malignaggi, IBF junior welterweight champion of the World
He wants to right all his wrongs, he says, all those crimes against humanity.
After he beats Hatton, he says, you’ll forget about the bad hair day against Lovemore N'dou, or his pedestrian effort against Herman Ngoudjo, or the time he was led away by a security guard after he yelled at the boxer Al Gonzales for losing a fight and he was doused with water.
Once outside, the security guard asked the bouncy kid with the spiked hair for his autograph.
That’s Paulie Malignaggi in a nutshell. The restless kid raised in Bensonhurst would impress you one second then make you scratch your head the next.
It was that way after he went 12 rugged rounds with Miguel Cotto in 2006 when some ruminated he might not last one. He was a club fighter with an outsized personality, a gimmicky white kid who was nothing more than a circus act, his critics laughed, but Paulie showed them. He took Cotto’s best shots and kept coming, damn the blood that was flowing from his nose like a hose, or the golf ball that seemed to be lodged in his cheek from the swelling. He even stunned Cotto in the later rounds with some stingers when Paulie looked as if his face might fall off. It almost did in the dressing room after the fight, caught on film in his documentary, “Magic Man.” There’s Paulie collapsing. There’s Paulie being rushed to the hospital. There’s all the visitors milling about in the waiting room of St. Vincent’s until night turned to day and it was just his uncle and his brother and an odd reporter who watched Malignaggi lose to Cotto but earn the respect of even the most grizzled of boxing followers. [details]
- Paulie Malignaggi, IBF junior welterweight champion of the World
He wants to right all his wrongs, he says, all those crimes against humanity.
After he beats Hatton, he says, you’ll forget about the bad hair day against Lovemore N'dou, or his pedestrian effort against Herman Ngoudjo, or the time he was led away by a security guard after he yelled at the boxer Al Gonzales for losing a fight and he was doused with water.
Once outside, the security guard asked the bouncy kid with the spiked hair for his autograph.
That’s Paulie Malignaggi in a nutshell. The restless kid raised in Bensonhurst would impress you one second then make you scratch your head the next.
It was that way after he went 12 rugged rounds with Miguel Cotto in 2006 when some ruminated he might not last one. He was a club fighter with an outsized personality, a gimmicky white kid who was nothing more than a circus act, his critics laughed, but Paulie showed them. He took Cotto’s best shots and kept coming, damn the blood that was flowing from his nose like a hose, or the golf ball that seemed to be lodged in his cheek from the swelling. He even stunned Cotto in the later rounds with some stingers when Paulie looked as if his face might fall off. It almost did in the dressing room after the fight, caught on film in his documentary, “Magic Man.” There’s Paulie collapsing. There’s Paulie being rushed to the hospital. There’s all the visitors milling about in the waiting room of St. Vincent’s until night turned to day and it was just his uncle and his brother and an odd reporter who watched Malignaggi lose to Cotto but earn the respect of even the most grizzled of boxing followers. [details]
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