Last night at the Barclays Center, Paulie Malignaggi outboxed Zab Judah over 12 rounds to become the ceremonial boxing king of their shared hometown of Brooklyn, New York, and two new titleholders were crowned including a pretty notable upset.
To open the night's action, Sakio Bika and Anthony Dirrell went to a split draw in a fight that got progressively dirty as it went on after a fast start. Bika retained his WBC super middleweight title as a result.
After that, Erislandy Lara won the vacant WBA "regular" junior middleweight title, outclassing Austin Trout, who dropped his second straight fight after last December's big win over Miguel Cotto.
In the third undercard bout of the televised broadcast, "Showtime" Shawn Porter pulled a pretty sizable upset by unseating Devon Alexander as IBF welterweight titleholder. The world title wins are the first major belts for both Lara and Porter.
On the untelevised portion of the show, prospects Sadam Ali, Marcus Browne, Julian Williams, and Juan Dominguez all won their fights.