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Malignaggi Keeping Fingers Crossed For Pacquiao Clash By Ryan Songalia PhilBoxing.com Tue, 05 Jan 2010  These past holidays were much happier for Paulie Malignaggi than last year's. Not that Malignaggi had trouble buying gifts for anyone on his list in 2008. Quite the contrary, as he was coming off the biggest payday of his career against Ricky Hatton. The Brooklynite was full on cash but low on pride. You just can’t put a price tag on some things. After being thoroughly outclassed and stopped in 11 rounds by Hatton a day before his 28th birthday, Malignaggi was faced with a number of tough decisions regarding his future as a prizefighter. "I had made a very good payday with Hatton so I knew if I made the right investments with that money I could go on without fighting," says the former IBF junior welterweight champion Malignaggi, 27-3 (5 KO). "My mind is in a much better place this year than it was last year. Last year I was wondering if my career was gonna go on and if it was gonna go on would I be an opponent or get to where I want to be. I had a lot of question marks and decisions to make. It was really stressful. "I have a lot of opportunities on the horizon now." Malignaggi's poor performance against Hatton left him on the verge of becoming a high-profile gatekeeper. His first major assignment following the Hatton fight saw him head to Juan Diaz's hometown of Houston last summer, conceding a weight limit of 138.5 and a smaller ring. A large contingency in the media and fans felt his unanimous decision loss that night was an unjust hometown decision. Perhaps galvanized by his strong showing, Malignaggi returned in a rematch last month to take a one-sided points win in Chicago. Now Malignaggi finds himself in a position to secure big fights in a deep division at 140, with guys like Timothy Bradley, Amir Khan and Devon Alexander getting business done. None of those matchups are bigger than a potential March date with WBO welterweight champ Manny Pacquiao. Malignaggi finds himself in this position almost by default, after recent weeks of negotiations with Floyd Mayweather Jr. and camp failed to produce the biggest fight in modern boxing history - for now. Ironically, Pacquiao is also looking at another Brooklyn resident, IBF junior middleweight champion Yuri Foreman, as a potential opponent. Most favor Foreman, with his belt (giving Pacquiao a chance to win a title in an unprecedented eighth weight class) and common promoter Top Rank, to instead get the call, though Malignaggi remains a strong next option. Should Malignaggi secure the date, he will undoubtedly receive by far the biggest payday of his career. He will also undoubtedly be a sizable underdog with all betting parlors, considering that Pacquiao holds dominant knockout wins over Hatton and Miguel Cotto, two of Malignaggi's conquerors. The primary breakdown in negotiations between Pacquiao and Mayweather came amidst a failure to come to agreement on the subject of performance enhancing drug tests. Mayweather's camp insisted that Pacquiao be subjected to "Olympic-style random drug testing" to be conducted by the U.S. Anti-Doping Agency a total of five times. Pacquiao's camp rejected the offer, claiming that blood tests too close to a fight would compromise his training. Pacquiao agreed to take unlimited urine tests and three blood tests, but none within 30 days of the fight. Pacquiao has never tested positive for any banned supplements, a fact that Malignaggi acknowledges. Regardless, Malignaggi has his suspicions and isn't shy about voicing them. "I'm really at a loss for words. I think [Pacquiao-Mayweather] should happen and I feel that Manny Pacquiao should take the tests if he's clean. He's making up stories where he doesn't know where his next excuse is coming from next. "I've had 30 pro fights and none of the blood tests I've taken were ever more than 30 days before. They never test for drugs or steroids because it costs too much money. This will be the first time that a blood test would also test for drugs. In my opinion he may be on something. Maybe - I'm just saying maybe. "All of a sudden he's coming up with I'm scared of needles but he's got 100 tattoos. These are all things that are being disproven. If you have to reach for excuses and they're lies, don't you think it's a little fishy? He's done this before, why is it all a problem now? If I accomplished as much as Manny I'd want to clear the air right away. Instead he's reacting the opposite way." Steroids and other performance-enhancing drugs are not total strangers to one another. Both Francois Botha and James Toney lost portions of the heavyweight crown in the urinal. In one of the biggest fights of the last decade, Fernando Vargas tested positive for the banned steroid stanozolol after his 11th round TKO loss to Oscar de la Hoya. Most provocative however was Max Kellerman's 2007 statement on his ESPN radio show in which he condemned most of the top boxers in the heavyweight division. "Seven out of the top ten heavyweights are on the juice. Most of the top guys are [juicing]." This marks the first time however that such accusations have been hurled at a top pound for pound fighter without any smoking gun or suspicious urinalysis reports. Malignaggi's suspicion stems largely from his ability to rise in weight without losing any of his speed, punching power or ability to absorb punches from larger foes. "Certain guys go up in weight and have success. They have to make sure they don't get hit so much. No matter what, when you go up in weight the bigger man will hit you harder and the guys who don't have success have trouble taking the bigger man's shots. The ones who were successful moving up in weight were good defensive fighters that managed not to take too many shots. "Manny Pacquiao has been the exception. He goes up in weight and he gets hit. When you're fighting monster punchers who get the respect of their own weight class and you walk right through them. When I saw that I was just like, 'something's not right with this guy.' "This situation goes far and beyond the realm of something normal in my opinion. He gets hit, and you just can't get hit by big guys like that and be able to take those kind of shots." Malignaggi points to the Cotto fight, where on a number of occasions Pacquiao invited the larger Cotto to come in and land his best shots and returned fire to greater effect. The punches never seemed to phase Pacquiao. It is interesting to note though that in Pacquiao's rapid ascent in weight from 135 to 147 over the course of a year or so, Pacquiao had only been in one damaging fight - the Cotto affair. He was barely touched by David Diaz, Oscar de la Hoya or Hatton in dominant wins. Of the 19 rounds he fought in those three bouts, it's unlikely that he lost any of them. As to what specifically Malignaggi believes Pacquiao to be using, that is another subject entirely. "There are steroids out there that help your oxygen levels," Malignaggi says. "They make you a lot more hyper and you can fight at a higher pace. If indeed you are fighting at a faster pace, it's not going to make your chin better but it will make your pace more hyper. A guy who is more hyper is obviously tougher to knock out. Maybe you can take a better shot. All of these are my opinions; none of these are facts. The fact does remain that there are drugs that do that with oxygen levels in the blood and all that." Malignaggi may be referring to erythropoietin, most commonly known as EPO, which is a glycoprotein hormone that stimulates red blood cell production, which in turn boosts endurance levels. Malignaggi for his part says that he has never taken any illegal performance enhancers because, "I never felt I was out of my league and needed to do something to compete with people.” He hasn't given much thought to the subject until recently but says he wouldn't be shocked if top boxers in the sport are using something additional to get a boost in their trade. "I would say they probably are." Without a contract being drawn up for Pacquiao-Malignaggi nor much for the Filipino star to gain from such a contest, Malignaggi's incendiary talk is probably not doing him any favors. A call was put in to The Wild Card Gym in Los Angeles on Monday afternoon seeking comment from Pacquiao's trainer Freddie Roach. Roach was not taking calls from media at the time. Of course there is always the convenience factor of making steroid accusations before facing someone. Perhaps it can be a built in excuse if things go wrong. Many look at Mayweather's accusations in that light and it's likely that a larger number of people will see that in Malignaggi's case. "I think everybody already knows how I feel and people know I'm still going into the fight. I guess people are always going to be suspicious of that just like people were suspicious when I was getting ready to fight Diaz [the first time] and complained about everything in Houston. With Pacquiao, he'd never take these drug tests so we'd never have proof of anything of what I suspect he might be doing." Still, Malignaggi is outwardly confident as he always is. He doesn't feel steroids, EPO, loaded gloves or any other kind of outside edge would affect the outcome of his second chance at a legacy-defining matchup. Should it happen, that is. "Pacquiao shines against guys that are flat-footed and come to kill him. If he fought me he wouldn't be fighting someone coming to kill him, he'd be fighting someone coming to outscore him. Miguel Cotto came to run him over, so did Hatton and the Mexican guys. He's got someone who isn't coming to run him over but who who's coming to outsmart him, outquick him, set him up off of his reckless offense. These are things he hasn't seen that make me confident about getting in the ring with him. "I never go into a fight thinking I can't win. I'd go into a fight with Manny Pacquiao with a plan to win."-RS New Boxing Digest Feature Story My latest feature story for Boxing Digest magazine, covering the first round of Showtime's Super Six tournament, is in the December edition available on newsstands everywhere. Shane Mosley and Andre Berto are on the cover. Ryan Songalia is a member of the Boxing Writers Association of America. He can be reached at songaliaboxing@aol.com. Click here to view a list of other articles written by Ryan Songalia.  |
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