By Dan Ambrose: A fight between WBA World welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi (32-4, 7 KO’s) and 41-year-old Shane Mosley (46-8-1, 39 KO’s) is still in the works for April 27th in Brooklyn, New York, according to ESPB. Golden Boy Promotions is working on putting the match-up together, and it’s possible the fight will take place unless Malignaggi fails to agree to the offer. Thus far, Malignaggi isn’t pleased with what’s being offered for the fight.
Malignaggi told Espn.com “I turned them down because I haven’t gotten the offer I want. I guess they anticipate buying themselves more time to convince me.”
Malignaggi has another option available to him if the Mosley fight fails to take place, and that’s a rematch with Amir Khan, who beat him badly two years ago. A fight against the more relevant Khan would likely bring more money than a fight against Mosley.
It’s not that Khan has accomplished as much as Shane, but Mosley hasn’t won a fight in three years and is coming off of a punishing 12 round decision loss to WBC junior middleweight champion Saul “Canelo” Alvarez last May. Mosley has been beaten by Manny Pacquiao and Floyd Mayweather Jr. in the last year and looked poor in both fights.
A Khan-Malignaggi fight might interest boxing fans because many of them likely didn’t get a chance to see how badly Khan beat Malignaggi in 2010 in stopping him in the 11th round in a terribly one-sided fight from start to the bitter finish, and they might go for the idea of seeing them fight. Malignaggi picked up the World Boxing Association 147 pound title last April in stopping little known champion Vyacheslav Senchenko in the 9th round.
Malignaggi has defended the title once, barely beating fringe contender Pablo Cesar Cano by a 12 round split decision last October in a fight where Malignaggi was knocked down in the 11th round. Malignaggi looked poor against a fighter that had recently been dominated by a past his best Erik Morales.
The fact that Malignaggi had to go life and death with Cano suggests that Golden Boy is going to need to make the biggest fight possible for Malignaggi’s next fight because he’s likely to lose even if Golden Boy picks out another opponent ranked near the bottom of the WBA rankings. Malignaggi is simply too vulnerable to beat even the softest of the contenders without a lot of risk.
Even though Mosley is completely shot, I’d still favor him over Malignaggi unless Mosley’s loss to Alvarez took too much out of him.
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