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Paris was 18 years old. he was an unbeaten boxer with dreams of glory that seemed about to die with him in the back of a crumbling home in one of the country's most notorious neighborhoods.
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Only seven months after turning pro, Paris said he was lured to the abandoned home by two boxers he had handled fairly easily in sparring a bit earlier. When he got there, he quickly realized he wasnt making a social call. Other men were waiting for him. This was a set-up. Paris walked out the back door of the house and was shot in the center of the back of the head, about three inches above his hair line.
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Paris was stabbed seven times. A woman, who had come to his homewith a man, plunged a knife into his back, his chest his side and his abdomen. His lung was punctured, his liver sliced, his kidney stabbed.
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"My baby mama was in the house and six months pregnant with my daughter," Paris said. "She had her four year-old son. I'm in the house by myself. You know, I got to protect my home, so I opened the door. This dude was going crazy tryuing to grab me, bigger dude, so I swung on him. We got to tussling, but the whole time we're tussling, his girl had pulled a knife out her pocket and started stabbing me up.
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He's gone 10-0 with four knockouts since the stabbing. These are heady times for a man who rightly should have been dead and gone years ago. But he's engaged Judah in a war of words and promised to stop him. He mocked Judah, a former world champion at 140 and 147 pounds, for getting knocked out by a body shot from Amir Khan in his last fight. Judah contends the punch was low, but Paris, like most observers, believes it was a legal punch.