By Edward Chaykovsky

Paulie Malignaggi (33-5, 7KOs), a former two-division champion, is looking for redemption when he faces undefeated IBF welterweight beltholder Shawn Porter (23-0-1, 14 KOs) on April 19th as part of the Bernard Hopkins-Beibut Shumenov undercard at Washington’s D.C. Armory.

Malignaggi felt he was robbed of his WBA welterweight title last June at the Barclays Center, when Adrien Broner won a close split decision to snatch away the belt. Broner's reign was short-lived, as he lost the strap to Marcos Maidana last December. He sees the opportunity against Porter, who he considers to be a better fighter than Broner, as the perfect opportunity to make things right.

"But sometimes in boxing it's about fighting smarter, not harder. Shawn has a tendency to fight very hard, and that's not a bad thing at all and it's got him to this point. It's gotten him a world championship and it's got him a lot of success, even as an amateur. But in professional boxing we have 12 rounds, and that leaves a lot of time to set traps, it leaves a lot of times to bait you with a lot of things. And so aggressiveness can be made to pay, and that's kind of my bread and butter. It's kind of always been my blueprint," Malignaggi said.

"But again, fight aside, I've gone over a hundred times of what the problem was in the Ricky Hatton fight. I'm not going to get into it again. But really, regardless of that, if you look at anything else I make aggressiveness pay. And we have our own game plans, and we, we feel that we have a very good game plan for that kind of aggressiveness. We expect a very high-intensity fight, and we expect to have the answers for that kind of high-intensity fight."