P aulie Malignaggi wasn’t just a of the most intriguing people in a sport known for them. So whether it was his jackhammer jab, his slick boxing skills or his underrated grit, when “The Magic Man” put on the gloves, you were likely going to be watching. And that’s after the pre-fight interviews that were always insightful and entertaining. But every superhero has his origin story … and this is Malignaggi’s. world champion during his 16-year professional career; he was one
MY FIRST AMATEUR FIGHT – March 6, 1998 – vs. Fernando Deguia “I signed up for the 1998 New York Golden Gloves. I started in June [of 1997] and I wanted to fight in the New York Metros in the fall, and my trainer (Willy Badillo) was like, ‘Nah, you’re not ready yet. I’m going to put you in the Golden Gloves.’ I was kind of disappointed. I was like, ‘Man, I can fight in the Metros. I can compete.’ And so I went to watch the whole Metro tournament, and I was starting to really visualize myself in with these fighters. “So I signed up for the Golden Gloves in ’98, and the tournament starts in January, but my weight class didn’t go until March. But then once my weight class went in March – I remember the dates; it was one week after another –
it was March 6th, March 13th, March 20th, and the final was April 4th. So I fought basically four out of five weeks in a row. So I went from having no fights to fighting almost every week in March and April. And by the time I fought in March, I was nervous, of course, but I was really, really excited. “The fight was in Glen Cove, so from Brooklyn, it’s a drive going to Long Island. I was nervous during the whole drive, but I’m excitedly nervous because I know I’ve worked hard for this, and I’m trying to motivate myself. I worked hard for this, and it’s going to be
THE FIRST TIME I LACED
UP THE GLOVES “The first time I put on boxing gloves as far as training is concerned, I was 16. I remember me and my friends would mess around. We bought the Modell’s little eight-ounce gloves and beat the shit out of each other. I feel like everybody did that in those days. But as far as the first time I put on gloves in the gym, I can remember the distinct feeling, because wrapping your hands is a different feeling. When a trainer wraps your hands, you have the gauze and you kind of feel cool. You’re not just playing around with
My First Time By Paulie Malignaggi, as told to Thomas Gerbasi
your buddies. A trainer wraps your hands, and then he puts the gloves on you, and you’re like, ‘Wow, this is an amazing feeling; I can’t wait to hit something with this.’ And I was feeling confident and excited to learn, I guess. Because I knew I was going to be learning the right way, actually, not the wrong way. “When I first started, my grandfather and my uncles took me to the gym to get me out of trouble. I wasn’t sure I was going to fight, but I did want to learn the right way. I remember telling myself when I went up the stairs in Gleason’s, ‘OK, I may have been in fights in my life, but I don’t know how to fight. Be a sponge. Don’t assume you know anything. I’m going to be shown a lot of things that are going to be foreign to me, and what I think is fighting is actually not fighting.’ And when I put myself in that mindset, it allowed me to just learn slowly and learn progressively, correctly. So even when I put the wraps on and then the gloves on, I didn’t just want to go tear into everything. I wanted to do what the trainer was telling me.”
my moment. But you don’t know who you’re going to fight. That’s the thing about the amateurs; you don’t know who you’re going to fight. So the unnerving part is not only are you going to fight, but you don’t know who the other guy is, whether he’s lefty or righty, and all this other stuff. “So I get there, and I bumped into a kid named Julio Cardenas. I didn’t know his name at the time, but he ended up being one of the better guys in the weight class. I bumped into him, and we kind of gave each other a stare, because we knew we were in the same weight class. But we ended up not fighting each other there that night. But I remember he got a stoppage in the fight before me, and I ended up getting a first-round knockout. I drew a kid named Fernando Deguia. The fight started and I just went right across the ring and started punching him in the face. There’s really no feel-out rounds, but I knew I was going to stay with my straight punches. That was a big thing for me. I said, ‘I don’t
Malignaggi’s unlikely boxing success was fueled by steadfast self-belief.
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