Dettloff: Malignaggi knows Cotto

Former junior welterweight belt holder Paulie Malignaggi knows Miguel Cotto better than most. He went 12 mostly painful rounds with the 140-pound version of Cotto back in June 2006, making him one of just three fighters to last the full distance with Cotto in a losing effort (Shane Mosley and Lovemore N’Dou are the others).

Malignaggi is an astute observer of the game and is rarely at a loss for words. So it should surprise no one that he has strong feelings about how Cotto’s fight Saturday night with Joshua Clottey will go.

“This is going to be a really violent fight,” he recently told RingTV.com. “I don’t see how this could be anything else but a really good fight.”

Like many, Malignaggi leans toward Cotto, 33-1 (27 knockouts), whom he still calls the best fighter he’s ever faced, but his rationale might surprise you.

“I think Clottey has a little fold in him,” Malignaggi said. “What I mean by that is not that he’ll quit if it gets tough, but that he might do some things to get himself disqualified. He’s done it before.”

Malignaggi pointed to Clottey’s disqualification loss to Carlos Baldomir in 1999 in London, and said he saw evidence of the same kind of tactic in Clottey’s decision loss to Antonio Margarito in December 2006 in Atlantic City.

For the record, the best available information regarding the Baldomir fight indicates that Clottey was ahead on points but fading when he head butted and cut Baldomir in the 10th round, which the referee ruled intentional. He was warned again in the same round but twice more butted Baldomir, at which point he was disqualified. Clottey and his team have long insisted that the disqualification was bogus.

Either way, Malignaggi said Cotto has no problem getting dirty if that’s the way Clottey, 35-2 (20), wants to go.

“Cotto is also a dirty fighter. If he’s not head butting you he just rubs his head in your face -- that’s how he cut me over my eye. He’ll also use his elbows and he goes low, but that’s boxing,” he said.

Malignaggi said that part of Clottey’s problem will be that Cotto is even better at 147 pounds than he was at 140.

“He’s improved as a fighter since then,” Malignaggi observed. “He was doing his thing at 140 but he’s improved. That shows you what a good fighter he is. A lot of guys get to a certain level and they don’t get any better. He’s at the top level and he’s still improving.

“Also, he takes a better shot at 147 because he’s not drained from making weight. He takes a better punch now. He quit against Margarito, but he was never wobbled or anything. He’s a real dangerous guy at welterweight.”

The same can be said of Clottey, of course, who in his highest-profile fights manhandled Zab Judah and Diego Corrales and gave Margarito fits before injuring his left hand. It’s why, as much as he admires Cotto, Malignaggi would not be shocked if Clottey pulled off the upset.

“He’s a real sleeper in the welterweight division. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he won. He’s a big threat -- a much bigger threat to Cotto than Manny Pacquiao would be. Cotto’s way too strong for Pacquiao, but not for Clottey. Clottey is a huge threat.”

It will help Cotto that the Madison Square Garden crowd will be overwhelmingly in his favor, but that shouldn’t bother Clottey, who fought the first half of his career in Ghana and England before relocating to the United States.

The important thing is that it should be a war.

“You know how some fights look good on paper and then it doesn’t turn out that way? I don’t see that happening here,” Malignaggi predicted. “Both guys will feel like they were hit by a train the next day.”

Sounds good to us.


Some random observations from last week:

After a career-worst showing against Ricky Hatton, Malignaggi is coming off a low-profile win over Christopher Fernandez in April and was preparing to face Mike Alvarado when an injury to Alvarado forced a cancellation. He has split with trainer Buddy McGirt, who he says was getting him away from doing the things that got him to the top. Malignaggi is currently mulling an offer to face Juan Diaz in Texas.

HBO’s decision to pass on Wladimir Klitschko-Ruslan Chagaev is their most puzzling since the cancellation of “Lucky Louie.” What’s next, a cartoon Harold Lederman answering viewer mail between rounds?…

Give Klitschko credit. A lot of guys would have welcomed a three-week delay or picked a stiff as a replacement for David Haye. Klitschko showed real guts picking a guy whose tonsils or appendix will give out any day now…

Chagaev’s trainer Michael Timm was quoted as saying Klitschko fights well “in reverse.” Is there another Klitschko brother out there we don’t know about?…

Kudos to Carlos Molina for pulling the upset against Danny Perez on Friday Night Fights, but what was with all those empty seats? It looked like a meeting of the ethical members of the WBO’s board of directors…

Kudos as well to Carl Froch, who is said to be pursuing a match with Bernard Hopkins. He couldn’t beat Hopkins with three arms, but why should he let that that stop him? Good for him…

Speaking of Hopkins, he needs to fight someone at light heavyweight or move on, already. This is getting silly…

There is utterly no truth to the insidious rumor that the WBA is holding off on making a ruling on the cancellation of the Chagaev-Nicolai Valuev fight until it sees whose check clears…

I’m as happy as anyone that Glen Johnson appears to be getting his rematch with Chad Dawson, but all the disparaging talk about Tavoris Cloud is nonsense. Cloud can fight, people…

So Michael Katsidis went all the way to the Philippines reportedly trying to lure Manny Pacquiao into a match. What, there’s no one in Australia who would take all of four seconds to knock him unconscious?...

Thank goodness we’ve left behind that terrible period when every televised show had to feature at least one women’s bout. If I want to see unattractive chicks beating hell out of one another I’ll watch an episode of “Charm School.”


Bill Dettloff can be reached at Dettloff@ptd.net