By Rob Smith: WBA World welterweight champion Vyacheslav Senchenko (32-0, 21 KO’s) will be defending his title for the fourth time against 31-year-old former IBF light welterweight champion Paulie Malignaggi (30-4, 6 KO’s) on April 29th at the Donbass Arena in Donetsk, Ukraine.
Malignaggi , who comes into this fight with a three-fight win streak since moving up to the welterweight division in 2010, says he’s got a strategy to use in this fight that almost guaranteed to bring him a victory. If the strategy fails, Malignaggi says he’ll adapt with different strategies to employ to beat the 33-year-old Senchenko.
Malignaggi told RingTV “I won’t expect that this guy can handle what we’re going to do. I really think that this guy is going to have a lot of problems with what I’m going to bring to the table…I’ll be able to make adjustments.”
Malignaggi makes it sound so mysterious with what he’s going to do when it seems pretty obvious that he can only do a couple of things that fit with his past fight patterns. In looking at his recent fights at welterweight against Michael Lozada, Jose Miguel Cotto and Orlando Lora, you’ll notice that mostly moved around in circles looking to land jabs and lancing shots where he’d come in fast to land a hard punch. However, he also showed willingness to slug by coming at his over-matched opponents to throw combinations.
It was obviously a lot easier to do against the guys he was facing because Malignaggi wasn’t matched against anyone that I would consider good. Senchenko isn’t a big puncher, but he’s got decent power and an excellent jab. He’s a very technically sound fighter, and it’s going to be difficult for Malignaggi to find anything that works for any length of time against the 5’10” Senchenko. He’s going to be giving away size and strength to Senchenko, and he may need the perfect game plan for him to take Senchenko’s title and leave with it on April 29th.