posted by Large

How much more terrible could Saturday have gone for Paulie the Not So Magic Man Malignaggi? The answer is none – none more terrible.

Although, I suppose he might have lost. He didn’t do that. If you missed it, Paulie managed to eke out a split decision over Lovemore N’Dou in Manchester on Saturday as the primary undercard to the big Ricky Hatton homecoming fight with Juan Lazcano. Malignaggi was on the card with the presumption that victories for both him and Hatton would result in the two fighters facing each other in their next bout.

Despite the fact that both presumed victors did indeed win their fights, one has to wonder if that Paulie/Hatton fight will come off now due to sheer indifference. After Hatton’s lackluster victory over Lazcano, I can’t think of a single reason to watch the (Often Gets) Hit Man fight again. As for Paulie, well, there is some interest there, if only to see if he can surpass the majestic stupidity of his performance on Saturday.

And let me say right here that I like Paulie. Actually, I kind of like him even more after this N’Dou debacle, because it was just so preposterous, so hilariously, painfully bizarre… ah lemme just tell the story.

So this was a big moment for the Magic Man, big stadium crowd in Man City’s football stadium, and a much bigger bout with Hatton lying in the balance. At last a stage to match the heroic vicissitudes of Paulie’s self-regard, and he was not in the mood disappoint in the way of a spectacle.

He came into the ring wearing a sort of kabuki mask, which was cool enough. Took about twenty minutes to get to the ring, which was whatever, typical.

When he finally made it to the ring, however, and took off the mask, Paulie revealed a head full of long, thin dreadlocks pulled back into a ponytail. Calling the fight for Versus, Wally Matthews, one of the few legitimate defenders of the old school left out there, immediately pointed out to the viewing audience that he had it on reliable information that these dreads were primarily hair-extensions.

The first bell rang, and the fun began. Malignaggi’s ponytail popped loose about twenty seconds into the round and suddenly it wasn’t ole Paulie from the block in there but Ozzy Ozbourne. The dreads couldn’t have been worse as a distraction, either. Paulie was completely blinded in there, and ended up eating a lot of shots while trying to brush his hair out of his eyes. Without question, the hair cost him the first round.

From there on the fight was all about the hair. They pulled it back and taped it in his corner and it kept springing free. In between rounds, one of his cornermen stood over him and frantically tried to snip off all the loose dreads before the next round began. As Wally Matthews put it, “Malignaggi must be the first boxer in history who needs a hairdresser in his corner.” Finally, somewhere around the eighth or ninth, the whole ponytail started swing up over Paulie head and onto his face, as in the picture up top there. What ensued from that was some of the most comic scenes I’ve ever witnessed in a boxing ring. It was Will Ferrell-movie material, pure theater of the absurd.

After that round, the jig was up. Paulie barber in the corner went to work and hacked off all the dreads before the next bell. I ask you people, has such a thing ever happened before in the history of the sweet science? An impromptu hair-cut in the corner in between rounds?

In the post-fight interviews, Malignaggi did not shy away from the ridiculousness of the whole thing, saying it was a complete disaster from start to finish. He didn’t quite acknowledge how much of a distraction it was in the ring, however, which was the amazing thing to me. He claims that he broke his oft-broken right hand once again in the sixth round, and I believe him. But he was off his game from the start of that fight, and the reason was on his head, and not in his gloves. The guy made about as big a fool of himself as could be imagined in front of, oh, 30,000 people, and what’s more, I can’t quite believe that the whole thing had Ricky Hatton thinking him to himself, “right then, that’s the bloke I need to be fighting next, that bloody idiot.”