By Allan Fox: 33-year-old Paulie Malignaggi (33-5, 7 KO’s) will be looking to become a 2-time welterweight champion this Saturday night when he challenges IBF 147lb champion Shawn Porter (23-0-1, 14 KO’s) at the DC Armory, Washington, District of Columbia, USA. Malignaggi lost his WBA welterweight title last year in losing a questionable 12 round split decision loss to Adrien Broner in June of 2013.
Malignaggi fought well enough to deserve the decision, but he was facing a very popular fighter in Broner. It was going to take something really special from Malignaggi to get the victory on that night. Since then, Malignaggi has been sitting idle for the past 10 months waiting for an opportunity for an interesting fight.
With Golden Boy Promotions offering him a title shot against the 26-year-old Porter, Malignaggi jumped at the chance. This is a tough but winnable fight for Malignaggi if he brings his ‘A’ game on Saturday. Porter is coming off of a big win over Devon Alexander last December, and he’s been looking really good. Malignaggi will need to use movement to keep from getting hit a lot, and mugged the way that Alexander was.
There’s a very good chance that Malignaggi will lose this fight if Porter is able to cut off the ring on him and force him to fight in a war. Malignaggi doesn’t have the power or the work rate to match Porter punch for punch over 12 rounds.
The Malignaggi-Porter fight will be televised on Showtime as part of the light heavyweight unification bout between IBF champion Bernard Hopkins and WBA champ Beibut Shumenov. Hopkins, 49, wants a win over Shumenov so that he can move forward for another big fight against WBC light heavyweight champion Adonis Stevenson for later this year. However, Hopkins is starting to show his age finally after all these years. In his last fight against Karo Murat last October, Hopkins was hit a lot by a fighter that Stevenson and WBO champion Sergey Kovalev likely would have totally demolished in short order.
WBO middleweight champion Peter Quillin will be defending his title against Lukas Konecny. This is a fight that hasn’t drawn a lot of interest due to Konecny’s age, limited height, and his lack of exposure in the United States. It’s fair to say that this is a step down for Quillin from his last fight against Gabriel Rosado. You can’t blame Quillin for taking the fight against Konecny, though, because the World Boxing Organization is the one that ranked the 35-year-old at No.2 with their sanctioning body, making it necessary for Quillin to defend his title against him.
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