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Tonight at Madison Square Garden in New York, undefeated light welter prospect Paulie Malignaggi will attempt an enormous step up in class when he challenges reigning WBO Champion Miguel Cotto. Cotto, 26-0 (22), has stopped his last six opponents and in the last five years only the very experienced operators Lovemore N’dou and John Brown have managed to go the distance with the Puerto Rican wrecking machine. In sharp contrast, Malignaggi, 21-0 (5), has faced a much lower grade of opposition than Cotto yet has only stopped five of those adversaries. While Cotto has endured icy patch! es against Ricardo Torres and DeMarcus Corley, Malignaggi simply doesn’t have the punch power to put the WBO Champion at the same risk.
But Cotto is playing with fire in regard to remaining at light welter when he clearly has difficulty making the divisional limit and this is what many in the fight business attribute his difficulties to in the Corley and Torres contests. Cotto will definitely have an added interest in stopping his boastful rival early as he may well run into weight related stamina problems if Malignaggi can survive into the later rounds.
But in order for Malignaggi to survive that far into the fight, he’ll have to keep himself moving the entire bout to avoid the champion’s lethal left hook, as the New Yorker won’t have the punch to keep Cotto off. Malignaggi has never even been in a scheduled twelve round bout before, and it remains to be seen whether or not he can pull off such a high stamina performance.
To counter Cotto’s certain aggressive strategy in this bout, the challenger will attempt to rely on what has been reported in the media as “blazing” speed of hand and foot. But is Malignaggi that fast or has his quickness been perceived as such only in relation to such adversaries as Donald Carmarena, Jeremy Yelton and Sandro Casamonica, the Brooklynite’s last three opponents? Miguel Cotto certainly seems to think so and was quoted earlier this week as saying that he couldn’t wait to “send Paulie back to the hole he climbed out of”.
If Paulie Malignaggi is a world class talent, he’ll wake up tomorrow morning as the new WBO Light Welter Champion, ready to stake his claim amid boxing’s elite.
But Miguel Cotto, already one of the sport’s best pound for pound fighters, will do everything he can to make good on his pledge to return Malignaggi back to fighting on small club and ballroom shows.
It should be a thrilling contest for as long as it lasts.
