Lee Selby is a surging BKB talent with a decorated gloved boxing background, and that makes for a great balance to break down the Paulie Malignaggi vs. Victor Ortiz clash at BKB 62. Selby himself is set to headline BKB 61 as ‘Lightning’ Lee will take on Ollie Sentance in London on November 14th.
BKB has in recent times brought on this influx of highly pedigreed gloved boxers, and when assessing both the magnitude, as well as the machinations of the Malignaggi vs. Ortiz matchup set for Los Angeles on December 5th, Selby said [via Bare Knuckle Bowker],
“Yeah, I think it’s a great fight. Both former professional boxers, former champions, top level professional boxers. They’ve both boxed in the trigon and both of them have come out with [damage]. Paulie Malignaggi some serious cuts. Victor Ortiz with some serious swellings on his head. So that’s just a little taster of what we can expect. We can expect a brutal; beautiful brutality in bare knuckle boxing is what we can expect.”
Paulie Malignaggi vs. Victor Ortiz almost happened in gloved boxing, will now go down in bare-knuckle almost 20 years later
Paulie Malignaggi and Victor Ortiz will close out the calendar year in California, but the two actually have a certain history that ties to LA. This was relayed during the BKB 62 press conference when Malignaggi was reflecting on some past training sessions at Freddie Roach’s Wild Card Boxing, although he mentioned never directly sparring with Ortiz.
Around 2008, ‘Magic Man’ mentioned he was formally offered an Ortiz bout, although Malignaggi felt that because he was coming off a defeat to Ricky Hatton, whereby he was finished inside the distance, his ability to negotiate a strong purse would not be there at that juncture. Alas, the timing was never quite as locked in thereafter, whereby both Malignaggi and Ortiz had different career arcs where their respective paths didn’t cross thereafter, until today that is.