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.