By Michael Lieberman: Instead of taking on Kelly Pavlik in his final fight of his career, Joe Calzaghe has opted for the Oscar De La Hoya finish to his career, facing a fighter that’s well beneath him in ability at this stage in his career Roy Jones Jr. on November 8th at New York’s Madison Square Garden. Jones may have been a great fighter one point in his career - and perhaps easily a much better fighter than Calzaghe can every hope to be - but at 39, Jones would be lucky to beat a bottom level top 15 fighter. To listen to Calzaghe tell you, people would think he’s about the face the toughest opponent of his career in the ancient Jones.

That may have been the truth if Jones was 10 years younger rather than a faded 39 year old, one who has been defeated three times out of his last six fights, while getting knocked out viciously twice to Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson. An argument could be made that the only reason that Jones has won any of his fights as of recently is because he’s no longer taking on top level opposition, thus disguising how faded he really is. Though Jones is only three years older than Calzaghe, he might as well be ten years older, because he has been in much tougher fights and against much superior opposition than the mostly soft opponents that Calzaghe has feasted on during his long 15 year career.

It’s unfortunate that Calzaghe doesn’t want to end his career on a high note by facing a top fighter like Kelly Pavlik or perhaps a Lucian Bute. Despite being a faded fighter, Jones is still ranked high - #1 WBO, #3 IBF & WBA, and #5 in the WBC - but I don’t see his rankings as legitimate to his actual talent at this point. In fact, I see a whole lot of fighters that are better than him and are ranked well below him, starting with Tavoris Cloud and Shaun George, to name just a couple of better fighters.

Both fighters would not only likely beat Jones at this point in his career, but would probably knock him out in the process. For that matter, I see both of them beating Calzaghe as well - not that he would ever fight them, mind you. I think Calzaghe has been on shut down for quite some time, ever since his win over Mikkel Kessler in November 2007. He barely beat Kessler, and instead of giving the Danish fighter a rematch so that people could see who conclusively is the better fighter of the two, Calzaghe has instead decided on taking on the thirty-nine year old Jones.

Not exactly the fight that most boxing fans want to see Calzaghe end his career on. So why isn’t Calzaghe fighting a better opponent like Pavlik? That’s a good question, and I wish I had the answer to it, but I don’t. Certainly, I’m not buying his excuse that Pavlik hasn’t proven himself, because he has, after all, defeated Jermain Taylor twice.

That’s something, isn’t it? Calzaghe just finished defeating Bernard Hopkins by a controversial decision. Pavlik, however, soundly defeated Hopkins conqueror Taylor twice, which would seem to indicate that not only is Pavlik a worthy opponent, he is by virtue of his wins over Taylor, is a better fighter than Calzaghe.

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