CAN MALIGNAGGI COME BACK? A HISTORICAL ANALYSIS

by William Dettloff

When Paulie Malignaggi meets Edner Cherry on HBO's Boxing After Dark on February 17th, it'll be the first time as a pro that he enters the ring with a loss on his record. The last time we saw him, Malignaggi was getting his head handed to him by Miguel Cotto, one of the best fighters in this business and one if its hardest hitters.

Though he comported himself well in defeat (meaning he took his beating like a man) there is reason to wonder if Malignaggi will be the same fighter again. There's a long history of undefeated fighters taking a hard defeat and never looking the same afterward. The common term is that the defeated fighter was "ruined" in the loss.

There's a history slightly smaller of special fighters who used that first loss to spur them on to greater things. These fighters learn something from the defeat (even if it's nothing more profound than to never fight that guy again), put it behind them, and move on.

The best recent example of a well-known fighter getting ruined is Fernando Vargas, who was growing into one of the superstars of the sport when Felix Trinidad crushed him in their junior middleweight title bout in December 2000. Going in, Vargas was 20-0 (18) and in the last year had beaten Winky Wright and Ike Quartey, two of the most respected names in the division.

Unfortunately for Vargas, Trinidad was at his fearsome best and he dropped Vargas five times before stopping him in the 12th round. "I always knew the fight would end with a knockout, even though it went into the 12th round. I still thought I would knock him out," said Trinidad. He did - brutally.

In a way the loss added to Vargas' popularity; he had demonstrated remarkable courage. But the beating changed him. In subsequent fights he appeared tentative and hesitant, nothing like the brash boxer-puncher he'd been before. A kayo loss to Oscar De La Hoya came soon after, followed by long periods of inactivity, unimpressive wins over lower-tier fighters and, most recently, a pair of losses to Shane Mosley. His post-Trinidad record is, at this writing, 6-3 (4).

Malignaggi didn't suffer the same kind of debilitating beat-down against Cotto that Vargas took against Trinidad; indeed, Malignaggi was down only once and lasted the full 12 rounds. His drubbing was closer in scope to the one Meldrick Taylor suffered against Julio Cesar Chavez in their thrilling fight on St. Patrick's Day 1990. What's remembered most about the battle The Ring called the fight of the 1990s is its ending; Taylor, 24-0-1 (14), was ahead on the cards when Chavez floored him in the 12th round. He rose, only to have referee Richard Steele stop the bout with two seconds left.

What's not as readily recalled is the tremendous beating Taylor took, the effects of which included a broken eye socket, a shredded lip and an abbreviated career. "He was faster than I was, and stronger," Chavez conceded afterward. He also was finished as a world class fighter.

Before the Chavez fight the undefeated Taylor was considered one of the best fighters in the world. His post-Chavez record was 14-7 (6) with many of the 14 wins against second-rate guys in uninspired efforts.

It's not only undefeated guys that can get ruined. In 1980, welterweight champion Pipino Cuevas had five losses on his record but was one of the most feared fighters in the game. He'd defended the WBA title 11 times, 10 by knockout. Challengers Angel Espada and Harold Weston had their jaws broken. Cuevas destroyed Billy Backus' eye socket and stopped him in less than six minutes.

It all ended when Thomas Hearns blew Cuevas out in two rounds in Detroit. Cuevas, a Mexican icon, immediately reverted back to his pre-championship days and following the Hearns fight went 8-8 (7) with four knockout losses - including a stoppage loss to the great Roberto Duran - before retiring in 1989.

Just a few years after Cuevas had reigned at welterweight, undefeated Donald Curry established himself as the best 147-pounder in the game and maybe the best in the sport pound-for-pound. He was 25-0 (20) when he took on 6-1 underdog Lloyd Honeyghan in Atlantic City. Honeyghan ravaged him from the start. "I knew from the first round he was gone," Honeyghan said afterward. Curry suffered a brutal beating and a 20-stitch cut over his left eye. It was stopped after the sixth round.

It made sense enough afterward when Curry blamed the loss on having to make the welterweight limit. It became less convincing when he went 9-5 (6) over his next 14 fights before retiring in 1997. Though he managed to win another alphabet title, losses to Mike McCallum, Terry Norris, Rene Jacquot, Michael Nunn and Emmett Linton suggested Honeyghan took more than Curry's welterweight title. He took everything that had made Curry a special fighter.

You'll note that none of these examples include close or even reasonably competitive decision losses. That suggests that the ruination of a fighter is not the psychological damage that comes with having been beaten, but the physical trauma that includes an associated loss of confidence and fearlessness in a heretofore confident athlete. In other words, it takes a significant beating to ruin a fighter. And that's the kind of beating Malignaggi took, even if he held his own in several rounds and outboxed Cotto in spots.

The great fighters, those in the other group, rebound from losses, even knockout losses or prolonged beat-downs. Joe Frazier didn't ruin Muhammad Ali in their first meeting, perhaps the greatest heavyweight title fight ever (nor did Ali ruin Frazier). Joe Louis was a better fighter after Max Schmeling beat him up and stopped him in 12 rounds than he'd been up to that point.

Lennox Lewis got flattened twice in his career and came back stronger and better. Hearns destroyed Duran in a manner every bit as devastating as he had Cuevas, and Duran, though he didn't come back better, was afterward at least as good as he was before the Hearns fight. He accepted the Hearns loss for what it was - a terrible styles matchup for him - and went after guys against whom he could compete. That's called learning from a loss.

Malignaggi is at the point in his career now when we find out what kind of prizefighter he is. You can make the case, and Malignaggi surely tries to, that he proved himself already by staying with Cotto for the entire fight, never submitting to Cotto's superior firepower. Indeed, many fighters have quit under less trying circumstances. But the real test comes now against Cherry, a puncher who will push him. On February 17 we'll see to which group Malignaggi belongs.