By Sean McDaniel: Former International Boxing Federation (IBF) light welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi (27-4, 5 KO’s) as reportedly split with his longtime promoter Lou Dibella and bought out the remainder of his promotional contract for a reported $75,000, according to Dan Rafael of ESPN. Apparently, Malignaggi and Dibella aren’t in agreement to where Malignaggi should be going with his boxing career.

One can only guess what Dibella wants Malignaggi to do. A good guess would be retirement, since Malignaggi has lost three out of his last five bouts, and has been stopped in two of them. However, Malignaggi, for some reason, wants to continue with his career and is interested in going after EBU welterweight champion Matthew Hatton (40-4-2, 15 KO’s) next. That would be an interesting fight, if only to see how good Matthew is or isn’t.

Malignaggi already got stopped in the 11th round by Matthew’s older brother Ricky Hatton in November 2008. Matthew Hatton doesn’t have the power that his brother possesses, but it might not really matter, because Malignaggi doesn’t throw a lot of punches and has zero power of his own. Other than a fight against Hatton, there’s really not much that Malignaggi could do at the light welterweight level.

The division has improved dramatically since Malignaggi last held the IBF title, and it’s hard to see Malignaggi competing against the likes of Timothy Bradley, Devon Alexander, Amir Khan, Marcos Maidana and Victor Ortiz. Those are the current big five in the division, and Malignaggi would be lucky if he could even find a place among the top 10 in the light welterweight division.

He can hang around and be a gate keeper or maybe get lucky and be selected for a title shot every once in a while by one of the champions because of his name value, but that’s probably about as much as he can do. If Malignaggi dares to take on one of the tougher contenders in the division like Kaizer Mabuza, Victor Cayo, Andriy Kotelnik, or Lamont Peterson, he’ll likely get beaten again and probably by another knockout.

In Malignaggi’s last fight, he was stopped in the 11th round by Khan on May 15th. Malignaggi was never competitive in that fight and just took punishment for 10 rounds until the referee decided to stop the one-sided fight in the 11th.
Malignaggi did well last year in beating the undersized lightweight Juan Diaz by a 12 round decision in December. That win did a lot in rejuvenating Malignaggi’s career temporarily and allowed him to get a nice payday against Khan. However, Diaz had no business fighting at light welterweight and was much too small to fight Malignaggi.

Unless Malignaggi plans on fighting at lightweight, he’s going to have problems against the top fighters at light welterweight. Malignaggi is probably too slender and weak to compete at welterweight. However, he might be good enough to beat Matthew Hatton, who is very vulnerable because he lacks power. This might be the best we can hope for from Malignaggi for the time being unless he has another guy like Hatton he has his eye on to try and pick off for a win.