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Some fighters let their fists do their talking for them. Not Paulie Malignaggi.
Some fighters let their fists do their talking for them. Not Paulie Malignaggi.
Malignaggi is a flashy dresser with a big mouth who's basically a good guy. He's also a walking poster boy for hair gel and wears so many tassels on his boxing shoes that it's like fighting with five-pound weights on his feet. On the night of June 10th, Paulie will enter the ring to face WBO 140-pound champion Miguel Cotto at Madison Square Garden. Cotto is a hero in his native Puerto Rico, a hard puncher with a potent left hook that he uses to perform liver surgery on opponents. June 10th is the eve of New York's Puerto Rican Day Parade. "I know what's coming," says Paulie. "Miguel Cotto, Madison Square Garden, a pro-Cotto crowd. But I've been waiting my whole life for this. June 10th is the opportunity of a lifetime for me."
Malignaggi was born in Brooklyn on November 23, 1980. His parents were Italian immigrants. His father was a professional soccer player. When Paulie was several months old, the family moved back to Italy. Six years later, having had a second child, they returned to the United States. This time, Paulie's father stayed for a few weeks and went back to Italy alone. Twelve years passed before Paulie heard from him again.
"I didn't have a nice growing up," Paulie says. "For a while, my mother, my brother Umberto, and I lived with my mother's parents in Brooklyn. Then my mother found an old Italian couple who let us live with them in a dilapidated old house. We were on welfare. I remember going into stores and getting dirty looks because we paid with food stamps. And I didn't know any English when we moved back to Brooklyn; that was hard."
When Paulie was nine, his mother remarried and moved with her sons to New Jersey. "I went with an open heart," Paulie says, "because I knew my real father wasn't coming back. But my step-father looked at me and Umberto as baggage that came with my mother; that's all. They had two more kids together and my step-father was a father to them, but he treated my brother and me like garbage. So I was a city kid in a suburban school. We didn't have much money, and I wore hand-me-down clothes from my mother's friends. The other kids were always making fun of me. The one thing I was good at was sports, but my mother wouldn't let me play sports in school because she didn't want me to turn out like my father. I'd come home after school every day, shut myself in my room, and listen to music on headphones."
There was also physical abuse. "From the start," Paulie remembers, "our step-father beat us. If Umberto or I looked at him the wrong way -- WHACK! He looked for reasons to beat us. And my mother couldn't defend us because, with four kids, she couldn't go through another divorce. My step-father took advantage of that to be like a dictator with total control over her life. Then, one day, I was fifteen, my step-father took off his belt and was getting ready to beat Umberto and me again. He told me, 'He's first; you're next.' I said, 'Fuck you.' Then me and Umberto jumped him. It was the first time we defended ourselves. He couldn't take us both at the same time. We got him pretty good. After the fighting stopped, he told my mother, 'I want them out now.'"
That night, Paulie's mother took her sons to her parents' home in Brooklyn. For the next two years, they slept on their grandparents' couch. Paulie enrolled in tenth grade at New Utricht High School but he wasn't much of a student.
"I'd go to the first class each morning just to get my attendance in," he acknowledges. "After that, I'd take off for the rest of the day. I had problems; no doubt about it. I acted out. I got into fights with other kids. Sometimes it was my fault; sometimes it wasn't. I'd wait for kids after school and beat them up, grab their beepers and flip them on the street for pocket money. Sometimes I was the kid who got jumped. You give some, you get some. I look back and I was turning into the wrong kind of person. I had this anger in me; I was bitter; I was losing my conscience. Some of the kids I hung out with then are in jail. Some straightened out. One is dead."
"Finally," Paulie recalls, "I got into one fight too many and the school dean said, 'That's it; you're gone.' A couple of days later, Memorial Day weekend 1997, I went to visit my mother in New Jersey, got in a fight with my step-father, and the cops came. When I got back to Brooklyn, my grandfather did two things. First, he had a construction company and started taking me to work with him every day to keep me out of trouble. I was there from seven in the morning till five in the afternoon. For ten hours, he'd pay me ten dollars. And a month later, he told my uncle to take me to Gleason's Gym. He figured I'd get my ass kicked. I remember him telling me, 'This will straighten you out and teach you respect.'"
"I walked into Gleason's Gym for the first time on June 26, 1997," Paulie remembers. "There were all these pictures of great fighters on the walls. People were working out, hitting speed bags and sparring. Someone put me in front of a mirror and started teaching me how to throw a jab. And I said to myself, 'I like this.' For the first time in my life, I wanted to learn."
1997 was a good time to be at Gleason's. Kevin Kelley, Junior Jones, and Zab Judah were all training there. "I felt comfortable in the gym," Paulie says. "I enjoyed being there and it guided me in the right direction. It wasn't long before I said to myself, 'I'm going to have to earn a living somehow. This can be my career.'"
"Boxing," F. X. Toole wrote, "is the risking of everything so you can respect yourself for the rest of your life."
"I had my dreams," Paulie says. "Nobody starts boxing to be a club fighter. I thought of boxing as a way to carve my name in history and show people that I was on this planet. But I'll tell you how green I was. The first time I sparred, I thought the protective cup was headgear. I tried to put it on my head. That was embarrassing. But I went to Gleason's every morning at nine o'clock and stayed until seven at night. I was able to let out what I had to let out; and by the time I got home, I was too tired to do anything else. I took my share of beatings in the gym; all fighters do. But that didn't bother me. I was used to getting hit. And the truth is, boxing saved my life. All of my identity and self-worth come from boxing. Boxing is life to me. Without boxing, I'd be nothing."
In the ring, Malignaggi was a prodigy. His first amateur fight was on March 6, 1998, in the 125-pound novice division of the New York City Golden Gloves. He had four fights in the tournament and won all of them. "By that time," he says, "I was starting to feel good about myself. I had a lot of growing up to do, and I was starting to do it." Three years later, fighting at 132 pounds, he won a national amateur championship. On July 7, 2001, he turned pro.
Paulie's record today is 21 victories in 21 fights; but he has registered only five knockouts, three of which came against undistinguished opponents in his first three professional outings. His last knockout was three years ago. His style is stick and move. Speed is the key to his success.
"My speed discourages everyone I fight," Paulie says. "I've got handspeed and footspeed, but my best weapon is my brain. I know exactly were I am in the ring at all times. I'm always thinking in there, setting my opponent up and keeping him from setting me up. Some people think I've got no heart because I'm not rock 'em sock 'em like Arturo Gatti. Arturo is my favorite fighter; not because he gets hit a lot but because he'll pay any price to win. Sooner or later, all fighters get buzzed. When it happens to me, people will see what I've got inside."
Then there's the matter of Malignaggi's persona. He has, shall we say, flair in and out of the ring.
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Originally Posted by wacko3205
Duke of 74
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