Malignaggi One of the Best Underappreciated Fighters of the Era:
If the past year has showed us anything about the career of Paulie “Magic Man” Malignaggi, it’s not just that the Brooklyn-based boxer has gone largely underrated through his career. It’s the he continues to be undervalued right up to the present day.
While Malignaggi may not be the complete package as a fighter, what he does do well combined with his focus and consistency have made him a world class contender for going on nine years now. It’s a record that many a once-highly touted contemporary can look upon with envy.
What’s In The Magic Box
Perhaps the main reason fight fans have so consistently failed to appreciate Malignaggi’s stuff is his lack of pop. I wouldn’t go so far as to call Malignaggi feather-fisted, but just one of those guys who wield merely average power. In boxing, a guy who almost always wins by means of a knockdown-free decision victory has a hard time attracting fans.
Instead, Malignaggi is a slickster. He wins fights by using speed, fleet feet, skill, and guile to score leather while avoiding leather in turn, thereby racking up round after round. That points to the secondary reason why Malignaggi is so underrated: certainly since the 1970s, slicksters have been largely an African-American thing, and it takes time for people to come around to anything that falls outside stereotype.
Yet the enchanted Brooklynite is certainly very good at what he does. Over the years, he has a truly B+ record, one that shows him only losing to truly elite fighters who were fighting at their peak: Miguel Cotto in 2006; Ricky Hatton in 2009; Amir Khan in 2010. Interestingly, whereas Hatton has since burnt out and retired, and Khan has slipped badly and stumbled over his own career machinations, Malignaggi is in contention for a world title.
But wait, what about Juan Diaz and Adrien Broner? The loss to Juan Diaz was such a stinky Texas robbery that the outcry prompted an immediate rematch, which the Magic Man won handily. Broner defeated Malignaggi fair and square, but by a much closer margin than some scorecards suggested, and not in the same decisive fashion as Cotto or Khan. It’s not hard to imagine Malignaggi doing better in a rematch.
So What Does That Mean?
What that means is don’t be so quick to discount Malignaggi, as I’m already seeing so many do in their prognostications for the upcoming fight with Shawn Porter. That peculiar, stubborn prejudice regarding Malignaggi is alive to this day, and I really don’t see what Porter has done to make him such a heavy favorite in some estimations. After all, only the best fighters in the best of times ever hand Malignaggi a thumping.
