Call him Lady Gago but Malignaggi plays horn like Miles Davis -- The Examiner

By Michael Marley, Examiner.com

Anecdotal evidence: It's about 9:30 on a warm March Friday. I walk past the health food store at 98th and Broadway. Filipino guy who works there is entering.

"Hey, what's with this Malignaggi guy," the man said to me. "What's his problem?"

So this is why I submit to those of you residing in Deepest Pacland that, in the oft-used Muhammad Ali phrase, Paulie Malignaggi (aka Lady Gago) is not as dumb as he looks.

A guy who peddles soy milk and whole grain bread knows who Malignaggi is, he's on this Manny Pacquiao fan's radar.

I seriously doubt that Yo Paulie even knows who journalist Jimmy Breslin is but Paulie has adopted Breslin's famous line that "if you don't blow your own horn, there is no music."

Malignaggi's mouth is so active, his Facebook forays so plentiful, he is not a single horn, he's more like a One Boxer Philharmonic.

Malignaggi wails on his horn in a Miles Davis virtuoso style.

I once heard Celtics great Bill Russell speak and he described some situation as "an ant attacking an elephant with rape on its mind."

You may think Malignaggi's continual he's a drug cheater rips on Pacquiao are about the same as Russell's simile but I disagree.

Malignaggi is abrasive, loud and confrontational which is perfect for a fighter who is the face of New York boxing. A generation before, we had another chipmunk, Hector "Macho" Camacho straight out of Spanish Harlem, now we have the Kid from Bensonhurst, Brooklyn.

This isn't Omaha or Cleveland, we can't have our top boxer be some aw shucks guy.

No Modest Mouse ever gets heard in the deafening din of the Big Town.

We all know guys who can talk their way out of fights but Malignaggi talks his way into lucrative bouts.

Without his nonstop verbiage, he never would've got that HBO rematch against Baby Bull Juan Diaz. But he fillibustered preptually and he got the rematch in neutral Chicago. He delivered with his best career performance.

Now, on May 15, he'll go in as undedog to Amir Khan. Khan is chinny but, with all his hand surgeries and his speed and finesse style, Paulie is unlikely to flatten the Bolton Wanderer.

But what if he shocks, what if he outpoints the taller Khan?

What if, on May 15, it's Malignaggi who runs this town?

Then, he puts himself in the Pacman Lottery, having beaten Khan and Coach Freddie Roach.

He won't go to the top of Pacquiao's possible foe list but he will be on it.

Silence is supposed to be golden, they say whoever "they" are, but you couldn't prove it by Malignaggi.
This madcap fighter brings in the do-re-mi with his flapping lips.

I would love to put a silencer on Lou DiBella. It makes sense as Malignaggi doesn't need a ventriloquist or an organ grinder behind him.

It's Paulie who makes the music which brings in the moolah.

A gavonne, he's not.

(mlcmarley@aol.com)

Source: examiner.com