“It was a crazy fight, crazy atmosphere and a life-changing night for me in terms of my mental psychology. I left the arena that night and the whole ride home on the train back to Brooklyn, I was just starstruck. I must’ve looked like I was in a trance to anybody else who was on the train. I was just re-envisioning what I just witnessed and I just told myself, ‘This is it, I have to do this and I need to be that’. That was the drug and that was the lightbulb.
“I went to watch Naseem Hamed versus Kevin Kelley live in Madison Square Garden. I didn’t yet have an amateur fight, but I was preparing and I was training and I was sort of immersed mentally, but I hadn’t really clicked in or decided yet [if boxing was a career option].
“I knew I had some talent by that point, but surely you couldn’t know anything about the future. But that was the night where my mentality sort of clicked into another gear, boxing-wise. It was a really, really psychologically motivating night for me.
“The irony of it was, Ricky Hatton was fighting that night and little did I know, our paths would cross in a Las Vegas main event years later. At that point, I would’ve never thought anything of it.”
From the starry-eyed teenager in Madison Square Garden to Las Vegas, Malignaggi’s Ricky Hatton story took 11 years to write, as the pair finally stood centre ring facing each other in 2008. This was always Paulie’s destiny.
“I won the IBF title that Ricky vacated in June ‘07. I think he chose to fight [Jose Luis] Castillo instead of Lovemore Ndou, so I ended up beating Ndou for the title and so from then on, a fight between me and Ricky was sort of coming.
“The buildup of the fight with Ricky was interesting, because there was sort of a love-hate relationship with the British fans, and you see how emotionally charged up they are, and I’m a big football fan, so obviously I’m familiar with the British fanfare, but to see it in boxing, I was like, ‘Oh, wow! This is like football – they sing, they chant’.
“I kind of enjoyed it. I’m a first-generation Italian-American, so my family also loves football. All my family, I grew up watching Serie A and all that stuff, so I kind of knew how that side of fanfare goes and whatnot.
“And so, when I started paying attention to Ricky Hatton, I was like, ‘this guy, it’s like a football club’. His fans, basically, it’s like cheering at the stadium. It has the same feel to it; it was cool.
“Also, Ricky was a very exciting fighter. He started developing his reputation in a big manner. Ricky is probably one of the most exciting fighters, maybe the most exciting fighter of my generation, and I think there were a lot of things he did well, but I also thought I was catching him at the right time at that moment. I thought he was sort of on the downside after he had lost to Mayweather and he hadn’t looked great against Lazcano. In my mind, I thought, ‘Now’s the time to catch Ricky.
“The issue that was hard to explain is that he also got me at the right time.
“I was working with trainer Buddy McGirt, who was obsessed with keeping your stance very low. Looking back now, I know this and I understand this, but I didn’t understand at the time.
“So, it’s sort of like Jose Mourinho can win the Champions League with Inter Milan and Porto, but he can’t win the Champions League with Manchester United and Real Madrid, for example, because you can be a good coach or a good trainer, but for certain styles.
“In reality, do I think it would’ve beaten Hatton at his best? Hey, I don’t know. But I also don’t think I got Hatton at his best in 2008. I think he was there for the taking.”
Hatton may have faced the worst version of the ‘Magic Man, ’ but Malignaggi was far from a bad fighter.
Paulie takes Boxing News back to the night he won his first world title, which was cemented by a comment from Lennox Lewis, claiming Paulie put on a “boxing clinic” against Ndou.
“It was big to have that praise from Lennox. He was an all-time great and he’s the guy you really, really hold in regard when receiving praise. He understands what he’s watching and he understands the intricacies of it.
“I was very, very sharp that night. There are a handful of nights that I could count on one hand in my life, both amateurs and pros, where I went into a fight and it was clicking on all cylinders, and that’s probably one of those nights. The other night was against Vyacheslav Senchenko when I won the second world title.
“You wish you could have had more of them, but nonetheless, things just click and you’re at least able to look back and have accomplished that, because it sort of set the road for the rest of your life at that point. That’s the image built around you.
“Once you become a world champion that can’t be taken away from you. Even if you lose it, you will always have that on your resume.”
Many fighters visualise becoming world champion, but was the adulation of winning such a euphoric landmark as big as Malignaggi expected?
“Not the first time, I don’t think so. As far as the sheer adrenaline all at once, I don’t know. I don’t think so. I mean, the thing for me when I won my two world championships is by the time we got to the announcements, victory was probably not in doubt.
“I knew I’d pretty much shut out Ndou, so I knew I was going to get the decision. It would’ve been the biggest robbery in history if I didn’t, and with Senchenko I got a stoppage, even though I was the underdog going to a different country.
“Many boxing critics had written me off already, saying my best days were behind me.
“When I was young and I started boxing, it was the ultimate dream.
“Once I’d watched Naseem Hamed and Kevin Kelley fight, it was like, ‘This is the ultimate. This is everything. I need to represent myself in this way.’
“Not a lot had gone my way in my life until that point. Becoming a professional boxer and champion would undo all the negativity and all the self-doubt and self-esteem issues I had, and just the errors that I had in my life, whether they were my fault or other people’s faults, regardless.
“Boxing made me take accountability, but it allowed me to do that in an adrenaline-junkie kind of way, fighting in combat in front of big arenas.
“We’re talking about a decade of work. My first day in the gym was June 26, 1997. I won the World Championship on June 16, 2007 – 10 days short of 10 full years.
“That’s a long road. There’s ups and downs throughout that journey, but one thing you never do is give up on your goal. When you have it, you set the goal, you set a pace towards it, and you march ahead.
“And yes, obstacles are there, it’s not every day is a great day, but when you accomplish it, because you know how much dedication it took, how much it meant to you, it is a very, very fulfilling feeling. You can hold on to that the rest of your life.”
One of the biggest fights of the Brooklyn native’s career was against another Briton, Olympic silver medallist Amir Khan.
Malignaggi recalls: “Amir, I think, is a stylistic nightmare for me.
“At that point, probably the only guy I ever fought in my career that was faster than me and had a lot of reach and was tall for the weight. A very frustrating night.
“He’s not the best fighter I ever fought. I think Cotto is the most complete fighter I ever fought. If you notice, whoever tried to box Amir had problems. You had to fight Amir, pressing him, to beat him.
“Of course, hindsight’s always 20/20. I’m not sure any version of me ever beats Amir. Like I said, it’s not because he’s the best fighter. I don’t know if there’s a version of me that can offset that speed. I’m not strong enough to just go forward on him and plough through. I dare to say even on my best night, I may never have beaten Amir Khan.”
Since retiring in 2017, Malignaggi has dabbled in bareknuckle boxing, had a push and pull with Conor McGregor and become a respected pundit.
A lot has changed in almost a decade since Paulie hung up his gloves, so how does he see the state of boxing in 2025?
“Well, now you got your Canelos of the world and Gervonta Davises of the world. Literally, they could go fight the guy who sweeps my driveway outside and they’ll have the nerve to put him on pay-per-view as a main event opponent.
“It’s wild, and people are stupid enough to buy it, because now what boxing has turned into in America – not so much a demand for great fights, it’s a demand to see people’s heroes win and they don’t care who they fight. As long as they can tune in and their heroes win, they go to sleep happy.
“I think Shakur Stevenson is the real deal, but I think his hand injuries could derail him.
“I think Gervonta Davis is overrated. I think Jared Anderson was probably overhyped to begin with.
“When I say overrated or overhyped, it doesn’t mean they have no talent. The need to have hero worship, where basically you have to keep a guy winning, even if he fights cab drivers, because now you’ve manufactured him as a champion. I think we have this problem, especially in America, once a guy becomes a star, they kind of gain this right not to fight the next-best contender because the next-best contender is maybe not popular enough.
“That’s why I think there’s a threat now with the Middle East coming in to bring all the big-time boxing over there.
“There wouldn’t even be an issue, there wouldn’t even be an opportunity for something like this unless boxing in the West didn’t create this problem in itself.”
