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This is pretty long and its 2 parts but it doesnt seem like it when your reading it. I still dont understand how anyone can hate this guy. I love his attitude and after hearing him talk, I now have no concerns about him coming back. I read a few other articles were some writers said he couldve won or did better if he decided to box & move more but he actually tried to stay inside and fight with Cotto or box inclose alot. Does anyone else believe that? Im surprised he would do something like that. Anyways, in this article he answers that by saying that the ring was too small for that.
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Almost as soon as Saturday night began, things started going downhill for Paulie Malignaggi.
Bad enough he was fighting Top Rank’s house fighter, Miguel Cotto, in an arena packed with Cotto’s Puerto Rican fans the night before the Puerto Rican Day parade; he was also about to do it in a ring he describes as “a playpen”, thus taking away any intentions of using his boxing ability in a large ring against the concussive puncher from Caguas.
“I could touch gloves with him from my corner,” he chuckled Monday morning. “We didn’t have to go to the middle of the ring.”
And though you couldn’t see it in his face, which was masked with steely determination, as he danced around the Madison Square Garden ring, Malignaggi knew he was going to have to switch gears gameplan-wise.
“They had told me earlier in the day that the ring was so small, but I was like ‘okay, whatever,’” he recalls. “I didn’t want that to bother me. Let them have that too.”
Malignaggi, unbeaten but relatively unknown outside of the east coast, was the challenger, the ‘stay busy’ fight for Cotto, whose next year of action is most likely mapped out already by his promotional team. At the very least, he’s scheduled to headline the Garden again next June before the Puerto Rican Day parade, so there were really no doubts that he was going to win Saturday night. He was the star of the show; Malignaggi was just the straight man, the one who wasn’t going to get too much say in how the promotion ran or what perks were given to the champion, who in addition to the small ring also got the benefit of an early weigh-in on Friday.
“Politically, I wasn’t in any position to complain about the weigh in or the ring because I’m nobody going into this fight,” said Malignaggi. “If he’s fighting Floyd Mayweather or anybody, he’s not gonna get away with an early weigh-in or a small ring, but because he’s fighting me and I’m nobody, I’ve got to take that.”
It’s what good soldiers do, and if anything, Malignaggi knew that a win over Cotto would earn him the right to call the shots in the future. And he was ready to win as he bounced effortlessly from foot to foot in his corner before the opening bell rang – he was just going to have to do it differently from what he planned.
“I can’t use the ring that much tonight,” he thought. “I have to smother him a lot instead of stepping back more.”
Round one, the crowd erupts and Malignaggi moves forward at Cotto – not backwards, not side to side, but right at him. He jabs, jabs and then shoots inside.
“Unfortunately, with the luck I got, the first time I try smothering him, the first ten seconds of the fight, I get cut,” said Malignaggi, and then panic sets in - not because he has his own blood streaming down the side of his face from the corner of his left eye, but because now there’s an urgency to get things done and fast. Challengers don’t get too many breaks in these situations, and this cut was a bad one.
“They’re gonna stop this fight, I’ve got to make sure I’m ahead,” thought Malignaggi.
As slick as they come, Malignaggi had racked up 21 victories without a loss because of his boxing, stiff jab, and quick combinations. He is no Miguel Cotto in regards to punching power, but now he was adopting a brawler’s mentality.
Score points, score points, push the pace, don’t step back.
“So instead of boxing, now I don’t want to give up ground because sometimes the judges will give the name guy rounds, especially early in the fight, just because he’s coming forward,” he said. “So I said, God forbid they stop this thing in the fourth round or something, I’m gonna lose on a technical decision. I gotta make sure I hold my ground and win these rounds.”
Next scene…one round later.
“And that gets me dropped.”
Nailed by Cotto’s first clean left hook of the fight in the second stanza, Malignaggi hit the floor. He bounced back up immediately, but Cotto is not known for letting opponents that he has bloodied and knocked down get back into the fight. It’s around this time that he’s clearing a nice spot on the canvas for his challengers, and it’s also at this moment that those of us who picked Malignaggi to win were suddenly looking for some ketchup and salt to go with the crow we were about to eat. As the round ended, Cotto was up on the scorecards, and it looked like it was just a matter of time before the Boricua Bomber lowered the boom. Malignaggi’s thought process was a little different.
“I didn’t think, ‘I got dropped,’” he recalls. “The only thing I thought was, ‘s**t, he got a 10-8 round.’ Now I’m really behind.”
And then a funny thing happened. Despite never being on a stage this big against a fighter this good, Malignaggi made a decision to go on, to fight, to stand, to take whatever measures necessary to win the fight. Cutman Danny Milano did his part by keeping Maliganaggi’s cut eye manageable, but the rest was up to the kid from Bensonhurst, who was finally swimming with the sharks, yet doing so with blood everywhere, as his nose started bleeding as well by the end of round four.
“It’s the desire to win,” said Malignaggi when asked what makes him go on in the face of such adversity. “My face was busted up but I still always felt that I could solve the problem. That inner will to want to be the best and win the fight drives me. There’s been a lot of doubters throughout the years, especially going into this fight, but I wasn’t gonna let them be happy. I kept telling myself I’m gonna find a way to win.”
Beginning in round five, a light started to shine at the end of the tunnel for Malignaggi, and it wasn’t an oncoming train. He began moving laterally and peppering Cotto with quick jabs, 1-2s and three punch combinations. The pro-Cotto crowd started to lose a few decibels with each flurry, and just like that, Malignaggi was battered, but battling, and this bout became a fight again.
“I saw moments when I had him real good,” he said. “He likes to fight in spurts and I wouldn’t let him. Every time he tried to take a breather, I made sure I got on top of him and throw combinations to keep him working.”
In round nine, Malignaggi even managed to stagger Cotto briefly on two occasions, but the champion would not stop his forward movement, would not stop throwing bombs that were starting to take a brutal toll on Malignaggi’s face.
“If there’s anybody who hits harder than that kid, I’d hate to deal with him,” laughed Malignaggi. “He hits haaard. Now I know why he ruins these people he fights. When he lands, he lands. There were even punches I was catching that were hurting.”
The pain wasn’t an issue during the fight though.
“I knew he hit hard already,” he said. “I told myself, ‘I’m gonna get hit harder tonight than I’ve ever been hit in my life.’ So when I did get hit, I didn’t say, ‘Oh my God, that hurts.’ I didn’t say that until after the fight. During the fight, I felt it, but my mind was brainwashed. I told myself that nothing was gonna affect me and I’m not gonna let anything make me fold. A lesser fighter’s gonna fold after being cut and then dropped in the second round. When do you see Miguel Cotto put guys in a position to hurt them and not finish them?”
When do you see them come back to even up the fight? Entering round ten, this reporter had the fight deadlocked in rounds at 4-4-1, with Cotto holding a one digit edge points wise due to his second round knockdown of the challenger.
For all intents and purposes, the fight was now on the line. Cotto had some minor bruising and swelling on his face, the marks of any fight that makes it to the tenth round, but Malignaggi’s face was almost unrecognizable. Cut eye, bloody nose, broken right cheekbone, swollen jaw – it was an episode of ER gone bad. Amazingly, the one injury that always seemed to crop up – broken hands – was nowhere to be found thanks to the surgery done by Dr. Stephen Margles and hand wrapping by Harry Keitt. And with two good mitts, there was no question that he would get off his stool and fight another nine minutes.
“Within yourself you find a way to come through certain tough moments,” said Malignaggi. “Teddy Atlas says in his book that a lot of fighters lie to themselves, thinking that the easy way out is to quit and not to keep fighting, when in actuality, the easy way out is to fight because if you don’t, you have to live with having been beaten and having folded for the rest of your life. In the meantime, you can get through those rough moments because they’re just moments. And that went through my mind – just get through those moments because I can turn this thing around. I’ve got the ability to turn this fight around, and that’s what I kept telling myself.”
The crowd flip-flopped in the tenth, with chants for Malignaggi turning into those for Cotto over the three minute frame, which was punctuated by clinching and thudding body shots by Cotto. When the bell rang, Cotto had pulled ahead and would stay there for the final two rounds. Malignaggi, spraying blood from his nose after each clinch or combination just to get room to breathe, had finally hit the wall. But he would not go down again, and he would not give in.
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Almost as soon as Saturday night began, things started going downhill for Paulie Malignaggi.
Bad enough he was fighting Top Rank’s house fighter, Miguel Cotto, in an arena packed with Cotto’s Puerto Rican fans the night before the Puerto Rican Day parade; he was also about to do it in a ring he describes as “a playpen”, thus taking away any intentions of using his boxing ability in a large ring against the concussive puncher from Caguas.
“I could touch gloves with him from my corner,” he chuckled Monday morning. “We didn’t have to go to the middle of the ring.”
And though you couldn’t see it in his face, which was masked with steely determination, as he danced around the Madison Square Garden ring, Malignaggi knew he was going to have to switch gears gameplan-wise.
“They had told me earlier in the day that the ring was so small, but I was like ‘okay, whatever,’” he recalls. “I didn’t want that to bother me. Let them have that too.”
Malignaggi, unbeaten but relatively unknown outside of the east coast, was the challenger, the ‘stay busy’ fight for Cotto, whose next year of action is most likely mapped out already by his promotional team. At the very least, he’s scheduled to headline the Garden again next June before the Puerto Rican Day parade, so there were really no doubts that he was going to win Saturday night. He was the star of the show; Malignaggi was just the straight man, the one who wasn’t going to get too much say in how the promotion ran or what perks were given to the champion, who in addition to the small ring also got the benefit of an early weigh-in on Friday.
“Politically, I wasn’t in any position to complain about the weigh in or the ring because I’m nobody going into this fight,” said Malignaggi. “If he’s fighting Floyd Mayweather or anybody, he’s not gonna get away with an early weigh-in or a small ring, but because he’s fighting me and I’m nobody, I’ve got to take that.”
It’s what good soldiers do, and if anything, Malignaggi knew that a win over Cotto would earn him the right to call the shots in the future. And he was ready to win as he bounced effortlessly from foot to foot in his corner before the opening bell rang – he was just going to have to do it differently from what he planned.
“I can’t use the ring that much tonight,” he thought. “I have to smother him a lot instead of stepping back more.”
Round one, the crowd erupts and Malignaggi moves forward at Cotto – not backwards, not side to side, but right at him. He jabs, jabs and then shoots inside.
“Unfortunately, with the luck I got, the first time I try smothering him, the first ten seconds of the fight, I get cut,” said Malignaggi, and then panic sets in - not because he has his own blood streaming down the side of his face from the corner of his left eye, but because now there’s an urgency to get things done and fast. Challengers don’t get too many breaks in these situations, and this cut was a bad one.
“They’re gonna stop this fight, I’ve got to make sure I’m ahead,” thought Malignaggi.
As slick as they come, Malignaggi had racked up 21 victories without a loss because of his boxing, stiff jab, and quick combinations. He is no Miguel Cotto in regards to punching power, but now he was adopting a brawler’s mentality.
Score points, score points, push the pace, don’t step back.
“So instead of boxing, now I don’t want to give up ground because sometimes the judges will give the name guy rounds, especially early in the fight, just because he’s coming forward,” he said. “So I said, God forbid they stop this thing in the fourth round or something, I’m gonna lose on a technical decision. I gotta make sure I hold my ground and win these rounds.”
Next scene…one round later.
“And that gets me dropped.”
Nailed by Cotto’s first clean left hook of the fight in the second stanza, Malignaggi hit the floor. He bounced back up immediately, but Cotto is not known for letting opponents that he has bloodied and knocked down get back into the fight. It’s around this time that he’s clearing a nice spot on the canvas for his challengers, and it’s also at this moment that those of us who picked Malignaggi to win were suddenly looking for some ketchup and salt to go with the crow we were about to eat. As the round ended, Cotto was up on the scorecards, and it looked like it was just a matter of time before the Boricua Bomber lowered the boom. Malignaggi’s thought process was a little different.
“I didn’t think, ‘I got dropped,’” he recalls. “The only thing I thought was, ‘s**t, he got a 10-8 round.’ Now I’m really behind.”
And then a funny thing happened. Despite never being on a stage this big against a fighter this good, Malignaggi made a decision to go on, to fight, to stand, to take whatever measures necessary to win the fight. Cutman Danny Milano did his part by keeping Maliganaggi’s cut eye manageable, but the rest was up to the kid from Bensonhurst, who was finally swimming with the sharks, yet doing so with blood everywhere, as his nose started bleeding as well by the end of round four.
“It’s the desire to win,” said Malignaggi when asked what makes him go on in the face of such adversity. “My face was busted up but I still always felt that I could solve the problem. That inner will to want to be the best and win the fight drives me. There’s been a lot of doubters throughout the years, especially going into this fight, but I wasn’t gonna let them be happy. I kept telling myself I’m gonna find a way to win.”
Beginning in round five, a light started to shine at the end of the tunnel for Malignaggi, and it wasn’t an oncoming train. He began moving laterally and peppering Cotto with quick jabs, 1-2s and three punch combinations. The pro-Cotto crowd started to lose a few decibels with each flurry, and just like that, Malignaggi was battered, but battling, and this bout became a fight again.
“I saw moments when I had him real good,” he said. “He likes to fight in spurts and I wouldn’t let him. Every time he tried to take a breather, I made sure I got on top of him and throw combinations to keep him working.”
In round nine, Malignaggi even managed to stagger Cotto briefly on two occasions, but the champion would not stop his forward movement, would not stop throwing bombs that were starting to take a brutal toll on Malignaggi’s face.
“If there’s anybody who hits harder than that kid, I’d hate to deal with him,” laughed Malignaggi. “He hits haaard. Now I know why he ruins these people he fights. When he lands, he lands. There were even punches I was catching that were hurting.”
The pain wasn’t an issue during the fight though.
“I knew he hit hard already,” he said. “I told myself, ‘I’m gonna get hit harder tonight than I’ve ever been hit in my life.’ So when I did get hit, I didn’t say, ‘Oh my God, that hurts.’ I didn’t say that until after the fight. During the fight, I felt it, but my mind was brainwashed. I told myself that nothing was gonna affect me and I’m not gonna let anything make me fold. A lesser fighter’s gonna fold after being cut and then dropped in the second round. When do you see Miguel Cotto put guys in a position to hurt them and not finish them?”
When do you see them come back to even up the fight? Entering round ten, this reporter had the fight deadlocked in rounds at 4-4-1, with Cotto holding a one digit edge points wise due to his second round knockdown of the challenger.
For all intents and purposes, the fight was now on the line. Cotto had some minor bruising and swelling on his face, the marks of any fight that makes it to the tenth round, but Malignaggi’s face was almost unrecognizable. Cut eye, bloody nose, broken right cheekbone, swollen jaw – it was an episode of ER gone bad. Amazingly, the one injury that always seemed to crop up – broken hands – was nowhere to be found thanks to the surgery done by Dr. Stephen Margles and hand wrapping by Harry Keitt. And with two good mitts, there was no question that he would get off his stool and fight another nine minutes.
“Within yourself you find a way to come through certain tough moments,” said Malignaggi. “Teddy Atlas says in his book that a lot of fighters lie to themselves, thinking that the easy way out is to quit and not to keep fighting, when in actuality, the easy way out is to fight because if you don’t, you have to live with having been beaten and having folded for the rest of your life. In the meantime, you can get through those rough moments because they’re just moments. And that went through my mind – just get through those moments because I can turn this thing around. I’ve got the ability to turn this fight around, and that’s what I kept telling myself.”
The crowd flip-flopped in the tenth, with chants for Malignaggi turning into those for Cotto over the three minute frame, which was punctuated by clinching and thudding body shots by Cotto. When the bell rang, Cotto had pulled ahead and would stay there for the final two rounds. Malignaggi, spraying blood from his nose after each clinch or combination just to get room to breathe, had finally hit the wall. But he would not go down again, and he would not give in.
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