Paulie Malignaggi will return to action at 44 years of age.
Paulie Malignaggi, 44, is the latest retired fighter to opt to return to action, but in this case Malignaggi will be returning to the bare knuckle forum instead professional boxing. In a lengthy conversation with Fight Hype, Malignaggi explains his drive to get back into fighting.
“I started getting curious [about a return] first about a year ago,” Malignaggi would explain before going into the backstory of how he’s been slowly gearing his body up to a point where he actually felt good about coming back to fight.
Malignaggi would admit that he knows he doesn’t have it in him to give a full 12 round effort, therefore thought BKB could be a good route because he feels confident about having a strong five rounds in him. That, of course, is something Malignaggi is familiar with as he lost a bare knuckle fight to Artem Lobov back in 2019 — although it’s a result he still disputes.
“When it comes to the Lobov fight, first of all I don’t think most people watched it because whoever is saying I lost the fight — I know MMA fans, they’re not that intelligent, they’ll think I lost the fight…MMA fans are actually so dumb that they’ll troll you about a fight that everybody knows you actually won. And the problem was I don’t think much boxing fans watched that fight so therefore the only opinions that are out there are the dumbest of the dumb.”
Having a goal, however, is something that Malignaggi says is a huge motivating factor for him, and he believes that winning a world title in BKB would make for another nice accolade to round out his professional fighting career. You can catch Malignaggi’s full conversation in the video link at the top.
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