Paulie Malignaggi’s Master Plan: This is Just Step One

By Thomas Gerbasi

Paulie Malignaggi won’t ever be accused of using one word when ten will do. And though some may not subscribe to his “more is more” approach, even they would admit that the former world champion is – and always has been – an honest fighter.

But as he approaches his 43rd professional bout this Saturday against Gabriel Bracero, the 35-year-old Brooklynite has never been more honest. He knows the question on everyone’s mind begins with “why” and ends with “fighting,” and he doesn’t shy away from it. He wonders himself sometimes, especially when it comes down to the dog days of training camp, when he tries to cut down to the 147-pound welterweight limit once more.

Eventually, he comes up with an answer that doesn’t just make sense to him, but that should make sense to everyone that hears it. And one word or ten or twenty just don’t work in this instance. It’s a question that deserves a 212-word Malignaggi-esque answer, and he’s happy to deliver it.

“Maybe it’s just a dream. We get into this sport as dreamers. We’re all dreamers, we all come from garbage. Guys who come into this sport aren’t normal. No normal people pursue combat. So we all come in as dreamers to better our lives. I’m the same way, Bracero’s the same way, anybody else who laces on the gloves for a living is the same way. So maybe I just don’t want to stop dreaming. Maybe I’m still living my dream. Whenever I’m there in an arena that’s roaring and yelling, I don’t care if they’re with me or against me, if they’re gripped to my fight, I’m the center of attention, coming from a place in my life where I was never the center of anything. I didn’t have s**t and people never expected me to become anything. So I can still take the stage and have all eyes on me, and maybe I just want to keep dreaming and feeling that for just a little bit longer. But I want to close it out in my way, to where I feel in this grandiose plan that I walk away in an honorable way, and not the way a lot of great champions have been forced to walk away from it.”

It’s the beauty and curse of this sport. Once you’re in, you’re all the way in, and it’s hard – if not impossible – to get out. Explain this to someone who has never laced on the gloves and they won’t get it. There are those who fought a handful of times or less and never lost that itch. So take someone who has done it for their entire adult life, and the idea of walking away doesn’t even last for more than a few days.

Malignaggi had those days after his last loss to Danny Garcia in August of last year. Stopped in the ninth round by the unbeaten Philadelphian at Barclays Center in his Brooklyn hometown, it wasn’t the way he wanted to go out, but he gave a good effort against one of the sport’s best and could leave the ring with his head high.

“I thought maybe I’ll just sit back and maybe I won’t do this again,” he said. “It’s why I never announced my retirement. I just don’t know how I’m gonna feel.”

In a couple days, he felt like fighting. 

“I wasn’t reactive (against Garcia) the way I usually am,” he said. “Let me get a fight in. So I got a fight in that I barely trained for in Italy, and I won that fight. I just wanted to get back in the ring. It’s like falling off a motorcycle. If you don’t jump right back on the bike, you’re never gonna ride the bike again.”

A little less than two months after losing to Garcia, he scored a near shutout win over Laszlo Fazekas in Milan. He thought some more about the Garcia fight and what led to his defeat. He found an answer in his head.

“It’s not an excuse because Danny Garcia is a tremendous fighter, but I barely had any sparring for that training camp,” Malignaggi said. “And that’s on me. I made that decision based on the fact that I had been cut in the Danny O’Connor training camp, and I took the fight because the money offer was good. And I figured I’m coming off a training camp, so my conditioning is good, I’ll just keep working on my conditioning and lay off the sparring because I have this cut and if it opens up again, I’ll have to pull out of the Garcia fight and the money’s too good for that. So I did something like 25-28 rounds and never more than five rounds in a single day. And most of the rounds came at the tail end of camp when I was hoping the eye was okay.”

Usually averaging around 125 rounds of sparring for a fight, Malignaggi felt the difference on fight night.

“Everybody’s different, but I’m a reflex fighter and I feel like nothing hones my reflexes the way sparring does,” he explains. “I’ve always relied on heavy sparring, rough sparring, gym war-type sparring, and I don’t shy away from it. It made my reflexes what they are, and it’s kept them sharp. And when I show up sharp to a fight, it’s because the sparring has gotten me prepared.”

He pauses.

“Who knows, maybe I lose the Garcia fight anyway. It’s not up to me to make excuses, but it is up to me to figure out a way to become better.”

After the Fazekas fight, he wanted a fight with a full camp and a shot at the European title. He got the full camp, but had to settle for the European Union title, which he got by defeating Antonio Moscatiello in December.

“Maybe it wasn’t against a world class fighter, but he came in with a 20-2-1 record and he came to try to win the fight because he realized it was an important opportunity for him,” he said. “I was relatively happy with my performance.”

“Relatively happy” meant that Malignaggi wasn’t done yet, and when approached with Saturday’s bout against Bracero, he wasn’t going to turn it down. And that’s where his master plan comes in, one that started in Miami’s 5th Street Gym, where he’s been working with Luis Perez.

“These guys still have that gleam in their eyes, so I feel like it can rub off on me when I spar with them and when I work with them,” he said. “I still feel pretty sharp, and they told me if you stay down here for an entire training camp, we think you can get to 140. And I start to wonder. (Laughs) I do think at 140 pounds I can fight for and win a world title. At 147 pounds, I have to be brutally honest with myself – those guys are probably too strong and too young and too ruthless for me. They’re just too big – physically, I don’t match up well with these welterweights, so I have to pick my spots. But I would love to close my career on something positive like that.”

It’s every fighter’s dream, and as unique as Malignaggi is, when it comes to boxing, he is like everyone who has stepped through the ropes.

“All I need to do is close out my career in a respectable manner in the way I would want to dream of it to close out,” he said. “If I can. If I can’t, there have been a lot of fighters that have had good careers and even great careers that didn’t close out their career under the bright lights with everybody cheering and everybody loving them. Sometimes you end up closing your career on the canvas.”

Malignaggi, as always, is willing to take that chance, to risk going out on his shield instead of on the shoulders of his team. It’s what makes him a fighter, and that fire will never go out. So risks be damned, Malignaggi is coming out swinging this Saturday night.

“I never feared getting hurt,” he said. “The fear is to lose. So when a guy is a big puncher, the fear isn’t that he’s going to hurt me; the fear is that he might knock me cold and I lose the fight because I can’t get up. Bracero has quality in his style to where if I’m not on point, he beats me. So the fear to lose is there, and I don’t want to feel that. I don’t intend on this to be my last fight. I know I’m going to fight a skilled, hungry fighter, but I’m a skilled hungry fighter still. If I’m gonna work this hard, then I’m gonna make it count on fight night. And I’m not a stepping stone. I’m hungry for my own plan to be executed, and this is just step one of a retirement plan that I have.”