Former junior welterweight kingpin Danny Garcia (30-0, 17 KOs) stands to gain nothing from beating Paulie Malignaggi (33-6, 7 KOs) Saturday night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. In a bout headlining a high-profile Premier Boxing Champions (PBC) card on ESPN and officially kicking off a welterweight campaign key to the 27-year-old?s future, the Philadelphia native is unlikely to emerge from Saturday?s twelve-rounder in better career shape than before the contest.
As a matter of fact, barring some sudden and unforeseen rush of animalistic, high-energy, Paulie-crushing power, Garcia is very likely to emerge from the Malignaggi bout with a significantly tarnished star.
For Garcia, a win over the 34-year-old Malignaggi is expected. Anything less than a dominant victory will be considered a mark against him at this point.
After a controversial win over Mauricio Herrera atop a laughably cynical Puerto Rican ?homecoming? in 2014, Garcia took heavy heat from the entire boxing world for blasting hopelessly undersized and overmatched Rod Salka in his very next contest. The stink from the Herrera and Salka fights diminished slightly with a majority decision win over Lamont Peterson this past April, although the 140 lb. champion vs. 140 lb. champion pairing lost some of its kick as a 143 lb. catchweight non-title bout.
And now Garcia is matched against Malignaggi, a fighter who has been up and down in recent years, but possesses the ability to make Garcia, or almost any other opponent, look absolutely awful.
Whether in victory or defeat, the wily and well-educated ?Magic Man? is very capable of dragging his opponent into a dull, listless affair full of retreats, false starts, and echoing audience boos. At this stage of Malignaggi?s career, being a crowd-frustrating spoiler is his only viable option and unless he proves to have gotten feeble and elderly over night, he will seek to maneuver Garcia Saturday night into twelve rounds of pugilistic somnambulism.
Malignaggi is certainly an odd choice of opponent for someone looking to make an immediate splash in the welterweight division on a high-profile ESPN showcase. But it fits into place with many other confusing and self-defeating matchmaking decisions recently made by the brains behind the PBC muscle.
Keith Thurman, for example, was recently matched against crafty veteran Luis Collazo in another lose-lose proposition. And, true to form, not only did Collazo manage to nullify everything that makes Thurman look good, but he also nearly scored an upset with a perfect body shot that sent Thurman into survival mode. Eventually, Thurman and the PBC were bailed out by a fight-ending headbutt and cut over Collazo?s eye.
Chris Arreola was looking to rebuild after a sickly performance against journeyman Curtis Harper. He wound up being matched against underrated and awkward Fred Kassi, who made the out of shape Arreola look really bad en route to a draw (that easily could?ve been a career-killing loss for Arreola).
And there are several other examples of lose-lose matchmaking from the PBC since the project?s debut in March. As a matter of fact, even the Daniel Jacobs-Sergio Mora title bout on the Garcia-Malignaggi undercard is heavy on the lose-lose dynamic of pitting a company hopeful against someone not expected to beat him, but stylistically sure to make him look bad.
All of this makes one wonder whether a company with an alleged $400 million operations war chest should?ve invested more money in acquiring real boxing people who can make quality matchmaking decisions with both fans and fighters in mind.
It?s not that anyone is calling for a choice between soft touches or an impossible, body-destroying gauntlet of challenges. Most informed observers would expect PBC to be focused on showcases at this stage of their game. They just need showcases that make their fighters look good and pairings that produce compelling action for the fans while establishing the presence of their stars.
Sending Danny Garcia into Malignaggi quicksand to the soundtrack of frustrated fan discontent will do nothing for Garcia and will turn off any potential new fans wandering by ESPN that night.
