By Dan Ambrose: Former IBF light welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi (30-4, 6 KO’s) has finally gotten his big wish and will be fighting for a world title against WBA welterweight champion Vyacheslav Senchenko (32-0, 21 KO’s) next.

There still isn’t a date or a venue for the fight as of now. According to fightnews.com, the World Boxing Association will call a purse bid for the Senchenko-Malignaggi fight on January 26th.

It’s hard to say who will win that one as both fighters are backed by powerful promoters. Malignaggi doesn’t want to fight Senchenko in his home country of Ukraine but that’s likely where the fight will take place if Senchenko’s promoter wins the bid.

Malignaggi lost his own IBF strap in November 2008 to Ricky Hatton by an 11th round TKO defeat. Two years later, Malignaggi fought WBA light welterweight champion Amir Khan for a title in May 2010, but it was a similar result for Malignaggi with him getting stopped once again in the 11th round.

Since that loss, Malignaggi has moved up to welterweight and beaten three lower level opponents in Michael Lozada, Jose Miguel Cotto and Orlando Lora to get pushed to near the top of the welterweight rankings. Malignaggi is now ranked #2 WBA, #7 WBO, #9 WBC, and #9 IBF.

It seems a little unusual for a fighter to get ranked at #2 based on the kinds of wins that Malignaggi has piled up at welterweight. However, the sanctioning bodies seem to give ex-champions an inflated ranking when they move up in weight and it often doesn’t require for them to beat more than two or three lower level guys before they’re pushed to near the top of the rankings. Is it fair to the other contenders in the division? Probably not but that’s what the sanctioning bodies like to do.

Look at the fighters that the WBA has ranked Malignaggi above in their rankings:

Kell Brook
Thomas Dulorme
Devon Alexander
Sebastian Lujan

I’m not sure that Malignaggi can beat any of them, let alone all of them. It would have been nice to have seen Malignaggi to have fought at least one of those guys to get a title shot instead of having it served to him on a silver platter after beating three B level fighters.

Senchenko, 34, will likely be a huge favorite over Malignaggi and if he isn’t, he should be. He does everything better than Malignaggi and is a bigger puncher as well. I think Malignaggi may be able to make it the full 12 rounds with this guy by playing defense but I doubt he’ll win.