By Allan Fox: WBA World welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi (31-4, 7 KO’s) is ensuring that he wins his next fight by facing light welterweight contender #7 WBC, #14 WBA, Pablo Cesar Cano (25-1-1, 19 KO’s) on October 20th at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, New York.

This will make things A LOT easier for the 31-year-old Malignaggi, because the 22-year-old Cano isn’t even a welterweight, and took a beating in his only fight of his career where he fought someone that was remotely talented in 35-year-old Erik Morales last year in a 10th round stoppage loss in June of 2010.

Cano is coming off of a 7th round stoppage win over Johan Perez last Saturday night in Mexico. Cano is beating decent fighters, but it doesn’t take a real genius to see that he’s good but not as good as the top fighters at light welterweight. You put Cano in with guys like Danny Garcia, Mike Alvarado, Lucas Matthysse, Lamont Peterson or Amir Khan, and Cano will get embarrassed.

Malignaggi wants to get a big fight against one of the top fighters like Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquiao, but then he does things like this in choosing Cano and it makes it easy to see why the top guys have zero into in fighting him. How can they? If Malignaggi isn’t going to face the best fighters at welterweight, then what’s the point in the best fighters coming to him if he’s not going to build up his own name properly. Malignaggi will probably lose as soon as he faces a good welterweight like Devon Alexander or Thomas Dulorme. The Cano fight may be Malingaggi’s only chance at milking his belt before he suffers a defeat in his first mandatory defense.