By William Mackay: WBA World welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi (32-4, 7 KO’s) won a controversial 12 round decision over interim WBA welterweight champion Pablo Cesar Cano (25-2-1, 19 KO’s) in a fight that many people felt Cano should have won. However, rather than giving Cano a rematch to quiet his critics and prove that he’s better than him, Malignaggi instead is taking the win as of it were a conclusive victory and will be moving on to try and get a fight against Ricky Hatton in early next year.

Malignaggi was knocked down in the 11th round by Cano, and took a lot of hard power shots from the young 23-year-old fighter. Malignaggi did little more than jab and jiggle his upper body in a strange way, as if trying to fake Cano out. It wasn’t working because he wasn’t concerned about Malignaggi’s jabs or his power shots. The only thing that was holding Cano back was his lack of hand speed in comparison to Malignaggi and his poor timing on his shots. Cano missed a lot of his power shots, and that probably kept him from knocking Malignaggi out because he was there to be stopped if Cano had been able to land enough of his big shots.

Two of the judges scored the 114-113, 114-113 in the Malignaggi’s favor, while the third judge scored it for Cano by a lopsided 118-109 score. I Personally had Cano winning the fight by a narrow margin.

After the fight, Malignaggi said “I thought I won the fight. I thought I won pretty handily. I was controlling the action. He came over the top and he got me good. But I felt like I won the fight…It would be an honor to fight Ricky Hatton.”

If Hatton watched the Malignaggi-Cano fight last Saturday night then he must be really licking his chops right now thinking about how easy it’ll be for him to take the WBA title off of him. I suppose Malignaggi won’t mind. He’ll get so much money for the Hatton fight that it won’t matter that he loses to him for a second time. Malignaggi was already beaten by Hatton four years ago in 2008, and even a shot Hatton will still likely be too much for Malignaggi.