In the weeks leading up to tonight’s welterweight showdown between WBA champ Paulie Malignaggi and Adrien Broner the trash talking has hit an all-time low.
Even by their standards (?) these gentlemen (?), the kings of crass, have found a level lower than a curb.
Their words have been vile, lacking style, inane and insane. I need not go any further. OK, one more: boring.
Broner, 26-0, with 22 knockouts, has actually been the least offensive of the two. I know – hard to imagine.
Malignaggi has been all over the map, and has made a fool of himself. Selling a fight is one thing, but this is just stupid. The question is why. In a word: scared; perhaps scared to death.
When he takes his limp record of 32-4 with seven KO’s into the ring tonight at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn, N.Y. (Showtime, 7 p.m.), he knows he will be facing a speedy punching machine who takes no prisoners. When Broner hurts an opponent, he pounces and destroys.
Malignaggi is tough, no doubt about it; the problem is he doesn’t have much power. Seven KO’s in 36 fights? Come on. Broner will attack, and Paulie will have no answer, except to absorb, which is dangerous. There is no quit in Malignaggi; his career has been built around his grit, but at the same time it could be his downfall, starting tonight.
Talk is all he really has left, and in a number of hours from now words won’t protect him, not for a second.
A fight that might be more entertaining than the Malignaggi-Broner bout is the semi-main event involving the heavy lifters of the sport. Heavyweight Johnathon Banks, 29-1-1, 19 KO’s, of Detroit and Seth Mitchell, 25-1-1, 19 KO’s, of Brandywine, Md., meet in a rematch of Banks’ shocking second-round knockout victory last November. Expect it to be short but sweet like the first encounter.
