When the conversation turns to the old school fight game, one thinks of smoked-filled rooms, the announcer capturing the classic dropped-in mic, celebrities and local toughs rubbing shoulders, and the buzz that comes over any fight crowd before a big fight. More than likely, your brain may also summon visions of MSG—the old and the new Mecca of boxing—and Stillman’s Gym on 8th Ave., and the fact that back in the day every neighborhood that cut a half-mile grid into the city’s zoning ordinances each had its own ethnic enclave and its own people’s champ. This is all may be hard to remember in today’s era where folks gladly pay $99 to watch a 36-minute love-fest in their living room instead of actually placing their butts in the seats at the fight.
In the proud fighting borough of Kings County, aka Broooook-lynnn, no fighter in recent history has captured the people’s old-school imagination like two-division world champion, Paulie “The Magic Man” Malignaggi.
“Paulie,” as he is affectionately known in Brooklyn, is of Sicilian extraction and quickly fell in love with boxing as a teenager and soon showed that love winning amateur New York Golden Gloves Championships in both 1998 and 2001.
The swaggering Malignaggi turned out to be a quick study on the pro level, becoming a world class fighter for much of his 14-year career, as well as a pugilist as equally as skilled with his verbal prowess as he was with his lightning-quick jabs.
But boxing is a funny business: a game in which fight fans and boxing historians can carry you on their shoulders one moment and then write you off the next, especially after a loss. And forget about it if a boxer loses two in a row. He might as well start shoe shining.
With that said, it’s kind of hard to believe that it’s only two years ago that “The Magic Man” expertly promoted his fight with Adrien Broner and then delivered a show of boxing skill for twelve rounds. (Many argue that Paulie won the split decision loss to Broner in 2013.)
And even before Broner, Malignaggi had done battle with the likes of Amir Khan, Ricky Hatton, and Miguel Cotto.
Not bad for a kid from Bensonhurst.
That fight alone with Cotto could make anyone from Brooklyn or anyone with just a drop of Italian blood in their veins weep at the courage Paulie displayed against Miguel Cotto when Miguel Cotto was really Miguel Cotto, pre-Margarito I beating.
To see what Mr. Malignaggi suffered to the orbital socket of his face after the fight against the Puerto Rican star could have averted the eyes of the most cast-iron-stomached of us. The guy looked like Finding Nemo after twelve rounds. To this day, Paulie has nerve damage on one side of his face.
And then came his last bout in April 2014 with up-and-coming, undefeated Shawn Porter who hadn’t had a knockout in two years before his fight with Paulie. With leaping and explosive left hooks and a right hand that finally proved too much for Paulie, Paulie was sent threw the ropes in only 4 rounds of action. A sad sight to see was the former champion covering his face with the paw of his glove and his rib cage rising up and down frantically.
After that fight, Paulie vomited all the way to the hospital and suffered a massive concussion. He also sustained a hematoma behind his ear that doctors would not let Malignaggi out of their care because of.
Paulie mentioned in an interview with the Boxing Channel that he could not believe he was getting hurt with everything Porter threw. He couldn’t believe it was happening. Maybe two years prior it wouldn’t have happened.
Most human beings have a blind spot to their own weaknesses, and perhaps no one is blinded more to their inevitable human degeneration than athletes—especially world class athletes like Malignaggi.
But the thing that separates the fighter coming to the realization that he no longer is the fighter that he used to be and a more traditional athlete facing the limits of his excellence is that the fighter comes to the truth alone, when it is too late to be helped or saved. That’s why it seems like it happens all at once.
Now we come to two weeks before Paulie’s scheduled fight against Danny O’Connor of Boston: a fighter of strong amateur pedigree but no one at Porter’s level. Instead of fighting, Malignaggi withdrew from the fight as a result of being cut early this week in sparring.
Maybe I’m a guy who believes in signs, but I think Paulie has nothing to prove to anybody, and I mean no disrespect to the guy. I never fought Miguel Cotto. But right now Malignaggi is known more for his excellent color commentating (I will go on record and say Paulie is perhaps the best commentator on the sport of boxing today) than he is his for his fists.
Even though O’Connor didn’t pose a real threat, you never now in the hurt business; maybe the next fighter will.
Fighters know that they may not leave the ring as whole as they went in, but no one really knows till it happens.
– Ryan Agius / @RyanJAgius
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