On June 10, Brooklyn-born Paulie Malignaggi (21-0, 5 KOs) will enter the ring at Madison Square Garden to face World Boxing Organization 140-pound champion Miguel Cotto (26-0, 22 KOs).

Cotto is a hero in his native Puerto Rico, a hard puncher with a potent left hook that he uses to perform liver surgery on opponents. June 10 is the eve of New York’s Puerto Rican Day Parade.

“I know what’s coming,” Malignaggi said shortly after the fight was signed. “Miguel Cotto, Madison Square Garden, a pro-Cotto crowd. But I’ve been waiting mywhole life for this. June 10th is the opportunity of a lifetime for me.”

The 25-year-old Malignaggi is the son of Italian immigrants.When he was six, his father abandoned the family. “For a while, my mother, my brother Umberto, and I lived with my mother’s parents in Brooklyn. Then my mother found an old Italian couple who let us live with them in a dilapidated old house. We were on welfare. I remember going into stores and getting dirty looks because we paid with food stamps.”

When Paulie was nine, his mother remarried and moved with her sons to New Jersey. “I went with an open heart,” Malignaggi said, “because I knew my real father wasn’t coming back. But my stepfather looked at me and Umberto as baggage that came with my mother. He treated us like garbage. So I was a city kid in a suburban school. We didn’t have much money, and I wore hand me-down clothes from my mother’s friends. The other kids were always making fun of me.”

Malignaggi said there were also confrontations at home between he and his stepfather. One day, when Paulie was 15, he and Umberto joined forces. “He couldn’t take us both at the same time,” Paulie remembers. “He told my mother, ‘I want them out now.’ “

That night, Malignaggi’s mother took Paulie and Umberto to her parents’ home in Brooklyn. For the next two years, they slept on their grandparents’ couch. Paulie enrolled in 10th grade at New Utricht High School, but he wasn’t much of a student.

“I’d go to the first class each morning just to get my attendance in,” he said. “After that, I’d take off for the day. I acted out. I got into fights with other kids. Sometimes it was my fault; sometimes it wasn’t. I’d wait for kids after school and beat them up, grab their beepers, and flip them on the street for pocket money. Sometimes I was the kid who got jumped. You give some, you get some. I had this anger in me; I was bitter; I was losing my conscience. Some of the kids I hung out with then are in jail. Some straightened out. One is dead. Finally, I got into one fight too many and the school dean said, ‘That’s it, you’re gone.’ “

A month later, Malignaggi’s grandfather told an uncle to take him to Gleason’s Gym. “He figured I’d get my ass kicked,” Malignaggi said last month. “I remember him telling me, ‘This will straighten you out and teach you respect.’ I walked into Gleason’s for the first time on June 26, 1997. There were pictures of great fighters on the walls. People were working out, hitting speed bags and sparring. Someone put me in front of a mirror and started teaching me how to throw a jab. And I said to myself, ‘I like this.’ For the first time in my life, I wanted to learn.”

In the ring, Malignaggi was a prodigy. His first amateur fight was on March 6, 1998, in the 125-pound novice division of the New York City Golden Gloves. He had four fights in the tournament and won all of them. “By that time, I was starting to feel good about myself. I had a lot of growing up to do, and I was starting to do it.” Three years later, he won a national amateur championship. “Boxing saved my life. All of my identity and self-worth come from boxing.”

Malignaggi’s style is stick and move. Speed is the key to his success. But he has registered only five knockouts in the professional in the professional ranks – and that’s a problem. To make it big, a fighter needs power. Otherwise, sooner or later, he’ll fall victim to opponents who force the issue and take two or three punches to land one. Cotto has power.

“This is a tough fight,” Malignaggi acknowledged. But it’s a good styles matchup for me. It takes more than power to beat me. Cotto can’t outbox me. He’s too slow, and he’ll be giving away rounds if he tries. So he’ll come right at me and try to beat me down. His whole fight is setting up the left hook. He’s very good at what he does, but he’s a one-dimensional fighter. So who has the edge? Power, it’s Cotto. Speed, me. Defense, me. Ring generalship, me.”

“This is what I’ve been waiting for,” Malignaggi said. “The big opponent, the big crowd, all the attention. I love this stuff. Everything I’ve learned, all the sacrifices and hurt and hope and anger will come together on June 10.Some of the kids I went to school with who used to make fun of me for the clothes I wore will be watching and they’ll say to themselves, ‘Hey, Paulie made it to the big time.’ There was a high school teacher, a guy who said in class one day, ‘Paulie is going to college; he’s going to major in would you like fries with that.’ Everyone laughed, and probably the only one who remembers it is me. Maybe that teacher will be watching and he’ll say to himself, ‘Look at that, Paulie made something of himself, after all.’ “

A lot of people in boxing question whether Paulie Malignaggi is ready to fight Miguel Cotto. They might instead ask whether Miguel Cotto is ready for Paulie.

thauser@rcn.com