Paulie Malignaggi vs. Danny O’Connor on May 29th Khan-Algieri card on PBC

By Boxing News - 04/20/2015 - Comments

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By Allan Fox: Former two division world champion Paulie Malignaggi (33-6, 7 KOs) will be back inside the ring next month on May 29th against little known 30-year-old Danny O’Connor (25-2, 9 KOs) in Malignaggi’s first fight since being destroyed by Shawn Porter in 4 rounds in 2014.

Malignaggi, 34, had been sitting all this time waiting for the right fight to come along that interested him.

The Malignaggi vs. O’Connor fight will be televised on Spike TV on Premier Boxing Champions on the Amir Khan vs. Chris Algieri fight card on 5/29 at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York. Adding Malignaggi to the card will help attract New Yorkers to the fight, as he’s from New York and he has a lot of fans in the area.

After sitting idle for an entire year, it’s likely that Malignaggi will be a little rusty. However, he’s not facing the best of talent in this fight so he should be okay. O’Connor isn’t much of a puncher. He’s suffered losses to Gabriel Bracero and Vivian Harris. He’s never beaten anyone that you can call a good fighter. In fact, Malignaggi will be a huge step up for him.

malig55It’s difficult to believe that this is the fight that Malignaggi decided to take. He had sounded undecided about whether he would return to the ring because he’s already made good money during his career, and doesn’t really need to continue fighting if he doesn’t want to.

Malignaggi captured the WBA welterweight title with a surprise 9th round knockout win over Vyacheslav Senchenko in April 2012. He defended the title successfully once in beating Pablo Cesar Cano by a close 12 round split decision in October of 2012 in a fight that was somewhat controversial.

In Malignaggi’s next title defense, he lost his title by a questionable 12 round split decision loss to Adrien Broner in June of 2013.

For Malignaggi to get another shot at a world title he’s going to need to put some victories together and stay active. It’s not going to help him sitting out of the ring for a year at a time like he just finished doing. Malignaggi has slipped out of the top 15 ranking due to his inactivity in the past year. He’s going to need to put some victories together if he wants to get a world title shot.

Obviously his chances of getting a title shot against the likes of Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao are slim at this point. But if Malignaggi can keep winning, he might be able to get a title shot against WBA champion Keith Thurman or IBF champion Kell Brook.

Those would be very tough fights for the soon to be 35-year-old Malignaggi because he doesn’t have much punching power and he might be a sitting duck against either of these guys like he was against Porter.

At this point Malignaggi should just hope he can get past O’Connor because it’s not a given that Malignaggi will win this fight.



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