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Boxing

17th Aug 2017

John Kavanagh’s assessment of Paulie Malignaggi situation really sums up his character

Wow

Ben Kiely

John Kavanagh

John Kavanagh is one class act.

When Paulie Malignaggi was drafted in as a sparring partner for Conor McGregor, he made it all about himself. If you thought the media tour for the fight was tedious, then trying to keep up with every interview Malignaggi did would have likely bored you into an early grave.

He was everywhere.

Malignaggi showed up for 20 rounds with ‘The Notorious’ and was going well until he quit the camp in a huff after accusing Team McGregor of deliberately leaking photos to make him look bad. The dispute just got uglier and uglier and then the inevitable footage was released which only painted him in a worse light, at least, in comparison to the UFC superstar.

After his high-profile exit, Malignaggi was everywhere again. Only this time, instead of bigging up McGregor’s abilities, he was talking shit about the fighter and his team.

A lesser man may have held his furious reaction against him, but not SBG head coach John Kavanagh, who had nothing but kind words to say about him to FloCombat.

“I will say that I haven’t really followed what Paulie has been doing afterwards. I’ve just followed what happened in the ring and I’ve been very happy with Paulie. I thought he was a great sparring partner.”

“I enjoyed the brief company I had with him and I’m very grateful that he agreed to be a part of it, because we got a lot of good rounds out of him and it confirmed to me that a lot of the strategies and techniques we’re going to be using will cross over and will work fine in the boxing ring.”

He’s one classy individual.