Boxers are trained to get up off the canvas, beat the count, and hope the fight continues until they regain their senses. That’s what Paulie Malignaggi was trying to do in the fourth round of his fight for the IBF welterweight championship against Shawn Porter April 19 at the DC Armory in Washington. Now Malignaggi is glad he didn’t beat the count.
The bout was stopped at 1:14 of the fourth round after Malignaggi went down under a barrage of punches from Porter, who won by knockout for the first time in two years. Malignaggi was immediately taken to an area hospital. Dazed and battered, he began vomiting and thought that was the extent of his problems. But doctors began to fear he might have a possible brain bleed.
“That’s when I realized how serious it was,” Malignaggi said recently. “I thought it was just the vomiting and part of the normal routine after a tough fight. But when they told me that, it made me think that’s the kind of damage fighters get in 10, 11 rounds of warfare. I’ve heard of brain bleeds in arduous fights with a lot of punches; but to take that kind of damage in 3½ rounds? I’m pretty durable and this guy hadn’t had a knockout in over two years. It caught me off guard. I was shocked.”
He’s now glad referee Sam Williams stopped the bout.
“I was trying to beat that last count,” Malignaggi continued. “If I had actually beaten that last count and I had actually managed to continue, who knows how many more punches it would have taken for the brain bleed to start because I was on the verge of it.”
There was no brain bleed. But every morning since that fight, Malignaggi was awoken nauseous, the lingering effects of post-concussion syndrome. The former junior welterweight and welterweight champion from Brooklyn, wasn’t quite himself when interviewed earlier in the week. Normally, a fast-talker, he spoke in a slower more deliberate tone and skipped over words difficult to pronounce. He said he has a ruptured eardrum and failed a balance test during his most recent doctor’s visit.
“The doctors have told me the headaches that come once in a while are from the concussion,” Malignaggi said. “The nausea is from the shots I took that messed up my equilibrium. They actually told me they’re not sure if it’s going to come back.”
Malignaggi, 33, isn’t ready to make any decision about retiring after compiling a record of 33-6 with 7 knockouts over a 14-year career. He already has begun a broadcasting career, serving as the chief ringside analyst for Showtime. He was voted the 2014 Boxing Writers Award for Broadcasting Excellence.
“I’m not sure what I’m going to do,” he said. “I need time to think about it and see was kind of damage I’ve taken from the fight. I feel like I’ll be OK, but I don’t know if I’ll be OK to fight. We’ll see. I have another career so I don’t want to mess that up. Broadcasting is something I enjoy doing and I want to keep doing it.”
MSG reports there are just under 1,000 tickets available for purchase for the June 7 showdown between Sergio Martinez and Miguel Cotto. This will be Cotto’s ninth appearance at the Garden, where he has sold more than 135,000 tickets, which is more than any other fighter in the past 20 years.
Canelo Alvarez (43-1-1, 31 KOs) of Mexico and Erislandy Lara (19-1-2, 12 KOs) of Cuba meet July 12 in Las Vegas in what figures to be an intriguing 154-pound bout. Alvarez, who had trouble trapping Floyd Mayweather, must prove he can corner the elusive Lara.
“Nobody wants to fight Lara,” said Oscar De La Hoya of Golden Boy Promotions. “But Canelo thinks he can beat him. To me, it’s a 50-50 fight.”