By Eric Thomas: With hardly a week gone by since his controversial victory over Bernard Hopkins last Saturday night, undefeated Joe Calzaghe (45-0, 32 KOs)has made statements that he has an interest in possibly fighting either Roy Jones Jr. (52-4, 38 KOs) or middleweight Kelly Pavlik in his next and final bout of his career. Most of Calzaghe’s comments have been aimed at him fighting the 39 year-old Jones, so that is the direction – the weakest – that I expect Calzaghe to head in for his next and final bout of his career.
We have a pretty good idea of how Calzaghe will look against Jones based on how he performed against Hopkins last Saturday night, which wasn’t all that good to be honest with you. The quality, or lack thereof of Calzaghe’s performances, couldn’t have been missed by the quick eyes of Jones, who can spot a weakness in an instant in a fighter. In Calzaghe’s case, there were a plenty of them, starting with his inability to get his punches off against the bigger, more powerful Hopkins. Jones, 39, considered to be over-the-hill by many of the boxing world, still has roughly 80% of his original skills intact, which may be a considerable drop off for him, but it still leaves him with more than enough skills to beat 95% of the top light heavyweights in the division.
I would normally figure on Jones having no chance at all against Calzaghe given the bad knockout losses for Jones in the past four years, firs to Antonio Tarver and then later to Glen Johnson. Jones has also not looked especially impressive in bouts with Anthony Hanshaw and Prince Badi Ajamu. After seeing those fights, I considered Jones to be washed up as a fighter, and badly in need of retiring as soon as possible. However, after seeing Jones in action in his last fight against Felix Trinidad, a bout in which Jones easily won by a 12-round unanimous decision in January 2008, I’ve had a change of mind about his chances against someone like Calzaghe.
I now think that Jones has more than enough skills to beat Calzaaghe, and additionally more speed as well. This will be the biggest problem for Calzaghe, as he’s been accustomed to being faster than his opponents for his entire career. Against Jones, even the current 39 year-old version of Jones, Calzaghe, 36, will still be the slower puncher by a considerable margin. Perhaps even more problematic for Calzaghe, I think, is Jones’ superior size and power, which will create all kinds of problems for Calzaghe to have to deal with in the fight. Jones is the far bigger man, accustomed to walking around at 190 lbs in between fights. While training for his bouts, Jones easily trims off 15 lbs of weight to get into shape for his bouts.
This means that Jones will have the weight advantage of the smaller 168 lb Calzaghe, who never gets much beyond 170 lbs in between fights. Calzaghe didn’t have nearly enough power or size to deal with Hopkins’ strength and size advantage last Saturday, and against Jones it will be more of the same. Jones is in fact even bigger and more powerful than Hopkins, whom he beat in the 90s. This will result in Calzaghe needing to use his in and out style of fighting more often, because he won’t be able to stand in front of Jones and attempt to outland him in flurries. Not when this is what Jones has done best in all career long, and is still exceptional with at his ripe age of 39.
The fighters that Jones has problems with now are fighters with high pressure styles of fighting, ones with a lot of power like Glen Johnson. Calzaghe, though, has neither the power, speed or size advantage over Jones. Because of that, I see Jones winning the fight by a 12-round decision. It will be much prettier than the Hopkins vs. Calzaghe fight, with much more boxing skills shown by both fighters. However, in the end, Jones will simply have far too much for Calzaghe to deal with and will beat him by an easy decision.
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