By Chris Williams: On the undercard of Saturday’s bout between Ricky Hatton and Juan Lazcano, IBF light welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi (24-1, 5 KOs) will be defending his title against challenger and former IBF champion Lovemore N’dou (46-9-1, 31 KO’s) in a rematch of their previous fight last year on June 16th, 2007. Malignaggi, 27, used a combination of counter punching and movement to keep the slower, harder punching N’dou from landing any real significant shots. In winning the fight, Malignaggi took N’dou’s title, which he’ll be defending for the second time on Saturday night.
Malignaggi, however, instead of remaining focused on the task at hand of beating N’dou, he’s been preoccupied with talks of fighting Hatton early next year. Hatton has said that he’s interested in fighting Malignaggi, arguably the most popular of the four super lightweight title holders. The fight, if it ever happens, would easily be the biggest payday of Malignaggi’s seven year professional boxing career. This is where the problem lies for Malignaggi, for he seems to be completely overlooking N’dou, as if winning the fight was a foregone conclusion. Though Malignaggi defeated N’dou in a dominating fashion, it was a lot closer than the fin al scores (120-106, 120-106 and 118-108) would have you believe. Malignaggi took some major shots in the fight, and resorted to running in the second half of the fight as he ran out the clock on N’dou.
Overall, it wasn’t an impressive performance, and if this were the setup for fight a bout with Hatton, there’s a good chance that Hatton – and the television networks – would focus on another opponent. That’s something that Malignaggi seems to be forgetting. That is, not only does he have to win against N’dou, but he has to defeat him in an impressive fashion, without running like he did last time, for if he does this might take away the interest for Hatton.
As things are, Malignaggi hasn’t looked good since defeating Edner Cherry in February 2007. In his last fight, Malignaggi struggled badly with challenger Herman Ngoudjo, taking a lot of punches and struggling with the speed and power of the fighter from Cameroon. To be sure, Malignaggi can ill-afford another poor performance if he hopes to land a fight with Hatton. As it is, he’s incredibly fortunate to still be the champion, because the decision was about as bad as I’ve ever seen in boxing.
Even under the best circumstances, Malignaggi has only moderate power, and has to win his fights by out-speeding his opponents, trying to make them miss while he lands his pitty-pat punches. It’s never pretty to watch, and it generally comes down to the judges’ having to weigh the much lighter punches from Malignaggi compared to the harder shots of his opponents. So far, other than his fight with Miguel Cotto who badly beat him, Malignaggi has been fortunate to get the nod by the judging.
However, his style of fighting is rather off putting for many fans and if he doesn’t conclusively defeat N’dou this time out, there may be a call for Hatton to take on a more appealing title holder, say, Ricardo Torres or Timothy Bradley. Obviously, it would probably have to take an especially poor performance (or loss) from Malignaggi for Hatton to take that option, because it seems that he’s looking for an easier fight than what Torres or Bradley would present.
Indeed, those are two fights that Hatton may not be able to win at this stage in his career, which is why it’s important for Malignaggi to really shine so that Hatton doesn’t bypass him. I think it would take a really bad performance by Malignaggi for Hatton to look elsewhere, because he really wants to not mess up his potential rematch with Floyd Mayweather Jr., which may be taking place in 2009.