Paulie Malignaggi is making his return to the ring, but he\u2019s keeping the gloves off.<\/p>\n
On Tuesday, the 44-year-old former boxing champion officially inked a three-fight deal to compete for BKB Bare Knuckle boxing with his debut expected on Sept. 6 in Bristol, England.<\/p>\n
His first fight with BKB actually marks his second attempt at bare-knuckle fighting after he signed with BKFC and faced UFC veteran Artem Lobov<\/a> in a losing effort back in 2019. That fight was actually one of the most talked about matchups of the year thanks to Malignaggi getting into a heated dispute with UFC superstar Conor McGregor<\/a> over a sparring session they shared prior to McGregor\u2019s boxing match with Floyd Mayweather<\/a>.<\/p>\n The bad blood between those two boiled over but with McGregor signed to the UFC, he couldn\u2019t venture out to take a fight with a different promotion so Lobov stepped up to the plate. Lobov won the fight by unanimous decision, but then he had his own falling out with McGregor, and the now former friends are actually locked up in a lawsuit battle in Ireland.<\/p>\n As for Malignaggi, he\u2019ll attempt to turn back the clock when he fights for the first time in nearly four years when he debuts for BKB in September.<\/p>\n \u201cI could easily use my position to jump right back into a title fight. But you know what? That\u2019s not what I\u2019m going to do,\u201d Malignaggi said about joining BKB in a press release. \u201cI respect the fighters too much. Here at BKB, there\u2019s really good contenders in the super welterweight division.<\/p>\n \u201cI know that I when this announcement gets around to the contenders, they\u2019re all going to want a piece of me. I want to fight one of those top contenders and earn my spot. I don\u2019t want to jump the line. I still got what got the goods and I\u2019m chasing that title.\u201d<\/p>\n Prior to signing to BKB as a fighter, Malignaggi actually served as one of the lead commentators on broadcasts for the promotion. Now, he\u2019ll fight there with hopes of getting his first professional win since 2016.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Paulie Malignaggi is making his return to the ring, but he\u2019s keeping the gloves off. On Tuesday, the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":193135,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4108],"tags":[78826,78825,1935,4496,19289,10175,10516,163,78823,78827,1501,78822,5705,78824,78821,26335,79,6093,16,15,6095],"class_list":{"0":"post-193134","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boxing","8":"tag-bare","9":"tag-bkb","10":"tag-boxing","11":"tag-boxing-news","12":"tag-deal","13":"tag-fight","14":"tag-fighting","15":"tag-front-page","16":"tag-inks","17":"tag-knuckle","18":"tag-latest-news","19":"tag-malignaggi","20":"tag-mma","21":"tag-multi","22":"tag-paulie","23":"tag-return","24":"tag-sports","25":"tag-to","26":"tag-uk","27":"tag-united-kingdom","28":"tag-with"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114701748322292541","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193134","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193134"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193134\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193135"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193134"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193134"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193134"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}