Malignaggi After Bare-Knuckle Win: “I Pray to God There’s No Retinal Tear”

Former world boxing champion Paul Malignaggi returned to bare-knuckle fighting at a Bare Knuckle event, where he defeated British fighter Tyrel Goodjohn. This was Malignaggi’s first bare-knuckle fight since 2019. Despite the victory, he suffered multiple worrying injuries.

“This is insane. I don’t know how things work in the UK. They still haven’t stitched me up. It’s 4:30 in the morning right now. I got here at 10 PM. Still no stitches, guys. They gave me an X-ray. I didn’t even get the results. They did a CT scan.

My ribs in the back are broken from all the ‘rabbit punches’, shots to the kidneys. My lower left rib is broken. My vision is still foggy. When they shine very bright light, it’s too blurry to assess the extent of the damage. They hope it’s just a contusion, that’s all. But the vision is too cloudy, which means there’s bleeding inside.

So they need to check for a retinal tear, and until my vision clears up, they can’t make a proper determination whether I have a retinal tear or not. I’m praying to God I don’t have a detached retina. But my vision is improving, at least in this eye — for sure. It’s not back to 100%, but at least it’s just blurry. Right after the fight, I couldn’t see anything.

From the second round to the end of the fight, I was basically fighting with one eye, but I didn’t realize it until afterward. I tried covering the good eye — and I couldn’t see anything with the other, everything was white. So from around the second round, after I took that shot, I fought the rest of the fight with one eye. It’s crazy,” Malignaggi said.

Earlier, the CEO of Bare Knuckle named Oleksandr Usyk as one of the promotion’s primary targets for a future signing.