Paulie Malignaggi, for all he's accomplished, has never been considered a truly elite fighter. The light-punching Brooklyn talker has, however, won world titles at both 140 and 147 pounds, competed against some of the best, and consistently defied the odds, utilizing superior ring IQ en route to a solid pro record of 33-6.
On Saturday, he'll face Danny Garcia, who moves up to 147 pounds after a strong run at 140 that weakened in its latter days. Garcia (30-0, 17 KO) is unbeaten, but many would argue that he shouldn't be. Mauricio Herrera gave Garcia all he could handle in March 2014, Garcia escaping with a majority decision win. The same happened this past April, when Garcia faced Lamont Peterson at a 143-pound catchweight, once again leaving with a majority decision victory some believed he did not deserve.
At 27, Garcia is still very much a young man in the sport, and the best may still be to come. But the seeds of doubt have been sowed a few times over. Between the controversial wins over Herrera and Peterson, Garcia took even more heat for a laughable second round knockout win over Rod Salka, an unqualified mid-tier fighter who was set up for Garcia to blast in a Showtime-televised main event last August.
After those three fights with Herrera, Salka, and Peterson, all of them hurting Garcia's reputation to some degree, it's easy to forget that two years ago next month, he beat Lucas Matthysse on the Mayweather-Canelo PPV undercard, a fight where he was picked by many experts to lose, expected to be overwhelmed by a superior puncher in Matthysse.
Instead, it was Garcia doing the damage, opening up a cut on the Argentine smasher and wisely picking it apart en route to a strong decision win. The Philadelphia-bred fighter also has wins over Kendall Holt, Erik Morales (twice), Amir Khan, and Zab Judah, dating back to 2011.
But as consistent a winner as Garcia has been, he's failed to get serious respect as a top-tier fighter himself, though he's been recognized as the No. 1 man at 140 pounds. There has been a sort of smoke and mirrors aura about Garcia, that he's certainly a good fighter, but just as certainly not a great one, and that any fight now, he was due to lose. An off night against Herrera seemed as though it may have handed him that first L, but Herrera came up short in the eyes of the judges. The same goes for Peterson.
Malignaggi, 34, has been here several times over. He fought Miguel Cotto way back in 2006, getting physically trounced by a stronger man, but never seeming truly outmatched. Though Malignaggi left that fight with pretty nasty injuries -- Cotto was at his seek-and-destroy best at that time -- he hung in there for 12 gritty rounds.