By Dan Ambrose: In watching some of Danny Garcia’s past fights, the ring rusty 34-year-old Paulie Malignaggi (34-6, 7 KOs) sees some things that he can do against unbeaten Garcia (30-0, 17 KOs) to take advantage of flaws in his game next month in their fight on August 1st at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.
However, Malignaggi expects the 27-year-old Garcia to make some adjustments in the ring to what he’s doing, so he sees it as a case of him having to keep making changes to stay on top of Garcia.
About the best thing the 34-year-old Malignaggi can do in this fight is to avoid brawling with Garcia. In Malignaggi’s last fight against Shawn Porter, he made the mistake of trying to punch with him rather than using his legs to hit and move.
It’s unclear what Malignaggi was thinking about when he decided to get in the trenches with Porter because he didn’t have nearly enough punching power to exchange shots with the heavier and much stronger Porter. But where Malignaggi really made a big mistake was trying to fight Porter on the inside.
Porter was able to really pound Malignaggi, cut him, and then drop him in the 4th to get an early knockout. If Malignaggi makes this same mistake against Garcia, then he’s going to get obliterated quickly.
“I think styles make fight. From a style point of view there are things that I feel like I’ll be able to do against Danny,” Malignaggi said. “But I also expect Danny had made some adjustments since those fights.”
Malignaggi can’t let Garcia land his left hook in this fight at all, period. If Garcia is able to land his left hook, I think Malignaggi will either fold up immediately or cut up around the eyes. Malignaggi isn’t sturdy enough to be taking flush shots from Garcia in this fight. Maybe a young Malignaggi might be able to take a few shots, but not the semi-retired version that we’re going to be seeing in this fight.
Malignaggi hasn’t been fighting on a regular basis since 2013. He fought only once in 2014 in losing to Porter and ending up badly concussed. It’s surprising that Malignaggi didn’t retire after that fight because a lot of fighters would have if they were in Malignaggi’s same situation.
Malignaggi isn’t haunted by demons from his past KO loss to Porter. He feels that it’s done with and he’s not thinking about it a lot or expecting bad things to happen in his future fights.
“I don’t ever think about this stuff, man. You have to have a short memory in boxing,” Malignaggi said. “And that applies to both when you look good and when you look bad. So whatever has happened to you in the past, it doesn’t matter whether it was good or bad.”
It doesn’t matter if Malignaggi is thinking about the loss to Porter or not. If Garcia lands his left hook in this fight, I don’t think Malignaggi is going to be able to take the shots without hitting the deck for the 10 count.
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