UNCASVILLE, Conn. ---  Several days earlier back in New York, Paulie Malignaggi had been telling people what an easy fight this was going to be. “But I was just talking trash,” Malignaggi admitted. “I was actually expecting a hard fight with N’dou. I never dreamed it was going to go like this.”

The Brooklyn junior welterweight won all 12 rounds on the cards of judges Alex Levin and Don Ackermann, and 10 of 12 on that of the other judge, Glenn Feldman, to lift the IBF title from Lovemore N’Dou at the Mohegan Sun Arena Saturday night, and by the end of the evening was calling out Ricky Hatton.

Hatton, the Briton who was relieved of the IBF belt earlier this year, has a bit of business to attend to himself next weekend, but assuming he is successful against Jose Luis Castillo, Malignaggi’s promoter Lou DiBella has invited him to Madison Square Garden to try to reclaim his belt, if he’s interested.

“It’s a dream come true,” said Malignaggi, who a year ago at this time was still in the hospital, recovering from broken facial bones incurred in his fight against Miguel Cotto at the Garden.

Malignaggi’s win wasn’t quite the cakewalk the scorecards made it out to be. The new champion was bleeding from a cut below his left eyelid over the final two rounds, and we’d actually given a couple of early rounds to N’dou.

For the first few rounds Malignaggi was still playing the mouse to the South African’s cat, and when he landed at all, it was usually with a jab while he was backing up, but in the fourth Malignaggi came alive, just about the time N’dou was beginning to weary of the chase, and remained firmly in control thereafter.

Once it became plain that the 35 year-old N’dou hadn’t a hope of catching Malignaggi long enough to do any real damage, he began to trot out his repertoire of veteran tricks acquired in 55 fights on three continents.

In the sixth, referee Eddie Cotton, who had already warned N’dou on several occasions, took a point for hitting behind the head. (Lovemore protested that he hadn’t been hitting Paulie behind the head. “I was hitting him on the side of the head,” he claimed.)

A round later, said Malignaggi, a N’dou elbow caused the initial damage to the eye, although the wound wouldn’t burst open “until a couple of head-butts in the eleventh and twelfth.”

Once Malignaggi hit his stride, the bout unfolded almost the way it had been envisioned on the drawing board – with the stronger N’dou applying the pressure and constantly moving forward, but the quicker Malignaggi picking off his punches and using his speed to land rapid-fire flurries.

A new coif made Malignaggi look as if he had a giant orange rooster’s comb perched on the top of his head. It might have looked sillier had he not been landing punches at such a prodigious rate: Over the course of the evening, he not only landed more than twice as many punches – 352 to N’dou’s 161, but in 12 rounds landed more jabs (193) than his opponent did total punches.

“Every time I got close to him the referee would separate us,” complained N’dou. “And the referee was letting Paulie get away with a lot.”

The punctuation mark came in the ninth, when Malignaggi scored the only knockdown of the fight. He caught N’dou off-balance with a short right to the chin, followed by a left hook that landed high on the shoulder but was still enough to knock him over.

“It surprised even me,” admitted Paulie.

As Malignaggi rose from his stool to begin the 11th, trainer Buddy McGirt exhorted him on, shouting “six more minutes and you’re the world champion.”

“I was having trouble seeing by then,” recalled Malignaggi. “I was thinking ‘I hope I don’t get caught and put to sleep here.”

He cruised through the final rounds, pausing to pepper N’dou with flurries a couple of times, and as the final seconds ticked off the clock he danced and thrust both fists into the air.

When the final bell rang his crew didn’t need to wait to hear the judges’ tallies. When DiBella, McGirt, and the rest of Maligaggi’s corner raced through the ropes to embrace the new champion, they wound up tackling him, and the whole bunch of them wound up in a pig-pile in the ring.

“It probably looked easier than it actually was,” said Malignaggi, now 23-1. “Lovemore made me work all twelve rounds. I’m just glad I won, and glad I won cleanly.”

You might suppose that it’s time for N’dou, now 45-9-1, to get back to the books (je has been studying law in Australia), but the deposed champion claimed afterward that there had been a rematch clause. If so, DiBella didn’t seem to know anything about it.

We’re just guessing that HBO isn’t particularly eager to show Malignaggi-N’dou II, but it’s an even safer bet that it’ll be a long time before you see either the winner or the loser of last night’s co-feature on television again.

Olympic bronze medalist Andre Dirrell’s reluctance to engage and Curtis Steven’s inability to do anything abou it produced a ten-round yawner. Although Dirrell won handily on the scorecards (98-92 on Don Trella’s; 97-93 on Tom Kacmarek’s and Steve Weisfeld’s) it was an aesthetically displeasing performance all around.

Dirrell contented himself by running for most of the night, pausing only long enough to fire a few long-range punches, while Stevens was utterly incapable of cutting off the ring.

After ten rounds Dirrell had landed only 98 punches, but it was more than double what Stevens connected with. The frustrated Brooklyn fighter landed just 43 times, or approximately four punches per round. (Nearly as embarrassing was th fact that against Dirrell’s long reach he landed just 9 of 166 jabs, less than one per round, and a connection rate of  5 per cent.

“He wasn’t even trying to fight,” said a disgusted Stevens, now 17-2. “I’d planned on cutting off the ring, but obviously, he was only trying not to allow himself to get hit.”

The audience of 3,514 booed from start to finish, but Dirrell, now 12-0, said “It’s not the crowd’s game. I’m not a crowd-pleaser.”

In a bout cut from eight to six rounds when the rest of the card ran long (only one of seven bouts didn’t go the distance), Colorado welterweight Marvin Cordova Jr. won a unanimous though somewhat lackluster decision over Brazilian Edvan dos Santos Barros. Judges John Mackaie and Trella had Cordova up 59-55, Weisfeld 58-56.

Philadelphia junior lightweight Rashiem Jefferson (14-0-1) was probably fortunate to get a win over his scrappy Ecuadorian opponent, Carlos VInan (now 7-4-2), and the crowd reflected its displeasure at the verdict by booing for several minutes. There were no knockdowns, although Vinan fell down in the seventh and Jefferson twice in the eighth. Feldman had Jefferson winning by an improbable 79-73, while Kaczmarek and Weisfeld each scored it 77-75.

Vietnamese-born, Buddy McGirt-trained featherweight Dat Nguyen posted a sixth-round TKO of Ohio-based journeyman Yamin Mohammad. Nguyen was credited with two knockdown – the first when he dropped Mohammad with a left to the body in the third round, the other near the end of the fifth when he caught Mohammad with a left hook to the jaw and referee Dick Flaherty ruled that the opponent would have gone down had he not bounced off the ropes.

Flaherty was still administering a mandatory 8-count when the bell ended the fifth, and was still eyeing Mohammad warily a round later. When Nguyen landed a fusillade of unanswered punches to the head, the referee moved in to stop it at 2:21 of the round.

Nguyen remains unbeaten at 10-0, while Mohammad fell to 7-17-1 with the loss.

Earlier, pair of unbeaten Cleveland youngsters posted wins in their preliminary bouts. Junior welter Pernice Brewer (5-0-1) went the distance in outpointing Canadian Sebastian Hamel (6-11-1). Mackaie scored it a shutout at 40-36, while Feldman and Kaczmarek gave Hamel a round apiece at 39-37.

In another four-rounder welterweight Willie Nelson (4-0) defeated Louisianan Chris Gray precisely the same scored. This time Trella had it 40-36, with Mackaie and Weisfeld returning the 39-37 scores.

*   *   *
BOXING AFTER DARK
MOHEGAN SUN ARENA
UNCASVILLE, Conn.
June 16, 2007

JUNIOR WELTERWEIGHTS: Paulie Malignaggi, 138, Brooklyn, N.Y. dec. Lovemore N’dou, 138 1/4, Transvaal, South Africa (12) (Wins IBF title)

Prenice Brewer, 136 1/4, Cleveland, Ohio dec. Sebastian Hamel, 136 3/4, Longueuil, Canada (4)

SUPER MIDDLEWEIGHTS: Andre Dirrell, 167, Flint, Mich. dec. Curtis Stevens, 166 1/4, Brooklyn, N.Y. (10)

WELTERWEIGHTS: Marvin Cordova, 146 3/4, Rocky Ford, Colo. Dec. Edvan dos Santos Barros, 147, Salvador de Bahia, Brazil (6)

Willie Nelson, 144 1/4, Cleveland, Ohio dec. Chris Gray, 144 1/2, Baton Rouge, La. (4)

JUNIOR LIGHTWEIGHTS: Rashiem Jefferson, 128 1/2, Philadelphia, Penn. Dec, Carlos Vinan, 128, Samora, Ecuador (8)

FEATHERWEIGHTS: Dat Nguyen, 125 1/4, Maui, Hawaii TKO’d Yamin Mohammad, 126, West Carrollton, Ohio (6)
(ends)


 

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