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Vinny Maddalone (record)
With a pleasant
personality outside the ring and a fearless daredevil boxing style that
drives boxing fans out of their seats, Vinny Maddalone is the most
exciting fighter in the heavyweight division.
A proud Italian American and a
member of the Teamsters, Maddalone says that he is fighting hard and
training hard to finally come to the day when it is just him and the
heavyweight champion alone in the ring. “That’s all I want is a shot.
That’s all I can ask for. I need the people behind me to get me to that
point, and then it’ll be up to me to perform to my best. To get that
shot, I do my beast and I keep pushing and pushing.”
The youngest of three boys, Vinny Maddalone was pitching minor league
baseball for the Adirondack Lumberjacks of the independent Northern
League when the idea to enter a ToughMan contest first crossed his
mind. “The ToughMan contest just caught my eye, so I entered. I had
the whole team come down to watch me. On the Friday night I fought
once, then on Saturday I fought four more times and I won. I got
hooked. I was probably like 17 or 18 and there were older guys in the
ToughMan, but I could take a pretty good punch and I was in better
condition. It was pretty wild.”
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Maddalone Technical Loss Overturned!
The New York State
Athletic Commission has announced that the shocking December 15
technical decision loss suffered by fan-favorite heavyweight Vinny
Maddalone has been changed to a no decision by virtue of opponent Julius
Long having tested positive for an, as yet, unknown illegal substance.
Fighting in the main event of a show at the Merchant Marine Academy in
Kings Point, New York, Maddalone (27-3, 19 KOs) suffered a nasty cut in
the fifth round as a result of a head butt that rendered him unable to
continue and necessitated the fight going to the scorecards prematurely.
Maddalone found
himself on the losing end of a technical decision, although most fans
believed he was winning, despite having taken a few rounds to adjust to
the long arms and roughhouse tactics of the 7’ 0” Detroiter Long (15-8,
12 KOs). “That fight left a bad taste in my mouth all week and I’m glad
Vinny won’t be tagged with a loss because of it,” said relieved
Maddalone promoter Joe DeGuardia of Star Boxing. ”Long did most of his
fighting that night outside the rules and cut up up Vinny pretty bad
with his head, forearms, elbows, and solid punches after the bell, so it
was questionable to award him a victory to begin with. A no decision was
the right thing to do in this case, even if it turned out to be for
a different reason than we hoped.” Maddalone required more than fifty
stitches to close the cut he suffered that night." |
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Maddalone: Boxing School is Out!
“I just want to show everybody what I can do. It’s been a while
since people saw me on national TV and I want to stay a TV fighter after
this. I want to get out there and let the nation see me and the
excitement I bring to the table.” Vinny Maddalone
Last time
Vinny Maddalone was on ESPN2’s Friday Night Fights, he showed he’s an
exciting power puncher with plenty of heart and guts, but was stopped in
the tenth and final round by opponent Brian Minto.
Scheduled to face fellow New Yorker Shannon Miller (11-0, 6 KOs) this
Friday, August 19, at the Saratoga Springs City Center, and televised
live once again on FNF, Maddalone (24-2, 17 KOs) will be hoping to add
“winner” to the description of this performance.
“I
don’t know too much about him,” admits Maddalone of Miller. “We tried to
get tapes and there weren’t any. I did talk to a couple people that have
seen him fight. He’s a big guy, 250 pounds, and he’s pretty much right
in front of you. (Laughs) I love when they stand in front of me.”
The Miller fight will be Maddalone’s first national exposure since
teaming up with respected trainer Al Certo and the Flushing native says
he’s hoping to put the new dimensions of his game on display. “I’m
training hard and doing what Al tells me to do. I’ll try to box a little
more, but I’ll always be right in front of you. People come to see that.
I’m learning to be more relaxed from Al. I was so tense before. I was
always in good condition, I just made myself tired trying to throw home
runs every time and chase the guy down. I take breathers now and cut off
the ring.”
Having had no amateur career to pre-develop his skills, Maddalone and
promoter Joe DeGuardia of Star Boxing adapted a game plan of moving up
slowly and letting him learn on the job. Part of that process naturally
involved losing occasionally. He dropped a decision to former
cruiserweight world champion Al Cole and got caught late in the fight
and stopped against Minto.
According to Maddalone, that process is now over. No more “learning by
losing.” “Win or lose, it’ll always be an entertaining fight when I’m in
there, but I don’t have it in my head about losing anymore. I’m at the
point now that I have to get in there and do it. I have to carry what
I’ve learned into the ring. I took it all in from Al and from my past
trainer, Bob Jackson, and soaked it up like a sponge. Now I have the
responsibility to perform. I have to win, no matter what. School is
definitely out.
A
working-class kid from the neighborhood knows when you finish school,
it’s time to go out and make a living. Vinny Maddalone says he’s now
ready to get the job done |
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Maddalone:
Losing Helped Me
Going in to his fight last June
with Alfred “Ice” Cole, New York Heavyweight Vinny Maddalone thought he
was ready to start his climb to the top of the division.
He wasn’t.
Sometimes after a loss, a
fighter is not the same, but Maddalone says he’s almost glad it
happened. “A lot of people came up to me and said hey, he’s an ex world
champ, you fought him on one day’s notice and he’s been sparring with
Ray Mercer for the past two months, but I’m not making any excuses. He
put it on me that fight. He knew what he had to do and he did just it.
It was a great learning experience for me. I learned a lot.”
Having found boxing via the
Toughman route, Maddalone freely admits he’s had to learn professional
boxing bit-by-bit as he went along because of his lack of an amateur
career. The 17-1 (12) slugger claims that although it was unfortunate
he had to get his lesson about pacing himself the hard way, he’s better
for it. “He was a nice guy, a really good guy,” he said of Cole. “He
told me to stay at it. He said ‘I beat you on experience.’ My amateur
and my pro careers are all put into one, so every fight for me is a
learning process. Even when I get fifty fights, I’ll still be
learning. Every time I step in the ring, I want to learn. My trainer
Bob Jackson calls me a sponge for knowledge. I take everything in. You
have to let boxing absorb into you.”
Nine months later and on the eve
of an eight-round main event appearance versus Brian Blakely this Friday
at the Resorts International Hotel in nearby Atlantic City, Maddalone
says he’s had time to rethink his game. “My trainer said that I used to
be too tense in the ring. I wanted to try and knock everybody out in
the first round. You can’t knock everybody out. You have to stay
relaxed and everything will come after that. I think my two fights
since that one were my two best performances. I was talking to my
trainers in the corner and asking them what to do. I wasn’t going out
there so tense and trying to land bombs. That’s what we’ve been
working on, staying relaxed.”
Standing 6’2, weighing 232, with
an engaging personality and a brawling boxing style, Maddalone has never
had to look for fans in his region. “This fight should be a sell-out.
There are a lot of people coming to watch me. My mangers work in
construction, so all the construction guys come and support me. So do
my friends from the neighbourhood. It’s just like the fights in Yonkers
(8 of his 18 fights have been there), but now they can have some fun
afterward. There’s not too much to do after the fights in Yonkers.”
While Friday’s opponent Brian
Blakely’s spotty record of 13-18-1 (4) isn’t terribly impressive, he has
been the distance with several promising and/or proven heavyweights like
Robert Davis, Leo Nolan, Arthur Binkowski and Malik Scott. While
beating, or especially knocking out, Blakely will be a moral victory;
Maddalone says he was hoping for his second try at a bigger fish in this
fight. “I was hoping to fight a guy like a Troy Weida, or someone with
a name and some quality wins, but it didn’t work out this time.
Hopefully next fight we’ll jump right back in there. Truthfully,” he
continued, “I don’t know anything about the guy (Blakely). It doesn’t
matter to me. I just think right now it’s about what I’ve got to do in
there. There’s no more who am I fighting, who am I fighting? It’s more
about what I have to do now.”
Vinny Maddalone says he’s a
little bit older and a little bit wiser and ready to try again. With a
solid fan base and an eagerness to learn, a heavyweight with decent
punching power can go far if he’s brought up slowly and finds the right
mix of heart and luck along the way. “I’ve had a loss and it’s not a
good feeling. I took me a couple weeks to get over it, but now I’ve got
to move forward and work harder. Everything is ready to go and I’m
looking forward to getting back to Atlantic City and putting on a good
show.” |
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BAYSIDE
BOXER TRADED ONE GLOVE FOR ANOTHER
By DAN MARTIN
New
York Post
April 16, 2002 --
Vinny Maddalone had dreams of making it in the pros. He's succeeding,
but not exactly how he expected.
A standout pitcher at Holy Cross H. S., the
Bayside resident went from Div. II Pfeiffer University in North Carolina
to the Adirondack Lumberjacks of the independent Northern League.
"The plan was definitely to catch on with
a minor-league team that was affiliated with the majors and see what
happened," Maddalone said. "I was doing the whole eight-hour
bus ride thing and thought I was getting there."
But he developed tendonitis in his right arm in
his second year and was released. So he went into the gym, where he had
begun boxing as a freshman at Pfeiffer after watching - and then
fighting in - Toughman competitions.
"It just clicked," said Maddalone,
28, of his entry into professional boxing six years later. "I
knocked the guy out in the first round of my first pro fight and I was
hooked."
While
it may not be what he imagined, Maddalone's career is working out just
fine. The heavyweight is 15-0 (10 KOs) and is scheduled to fight Ron
Brown on April 26 at Cipriani's 42nd Street. Included on the card is a
match featuring 31-year-old Flushing native Rich Melito (26-1, 23 KOs),
a cruiserweight who also played baseball at Holy Cross. |
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