By Michael Lieberman: I don’t care if Joe Calzaghe beat Roy Jones Jr. last Saturday night. The fight proved little other than Calzaghe is good enough to defeat the remnants of Jones, who is maybe operating at 30% of what he used to be while in his prime. A win over Jones at this point, as faded as he is as a fighter, needs to be put in the larger perspective to where he’s currently at as fighter.
And let us not be under any illusions about how diminished he is as a fighter, because he’s clearly only a shell of what he was while in the prime of his career. For that reason, I firmly believe that an asterisk needs be placed alongside Calzaghe’s name in the record book for his win over Jones. Either that, or maybe call it an exhibition bout and not have it count in the record books. The only thing that we learned from the fight is that Calzaghe can beat a fighter that has stopped being relevant as long as four to five years ago.
If Calzaghe wanted a true legacy building fight with Jones, then by all means, he should have manned up and fought Jones a decade ago when he was still at the peak of his game. Anything less than that, however, is a complete waste of time and proves little. If it was me, I’d discount the win altogether and just call it a glorified sparring match between an old timer and a still relevant fighter at the top of his game.
In other words, it’s not a quality win as far as I’m concerned and should be ruled out altogether or else an asterisk being put in the records book next to the “w” for Calzaghe. I think the true blue boxing fans know who the real winner would be if the fight had taken place 10 years ago.
If anyone wanted to see who the real winner of the fight would be, they should only look at the 1st round of the fight when Jones manhandled Calzaghe, knocking him down with a right hand and hitting him often with powerful hooks and right hands. If this fight had taken place a decade ago, the first round would have probably been amplified by a factor or 12, giving Jones an absurdly easy decision win over Calzaghe.
So, while Calzaghe may have beaten Jones by an easy decision, it would be a huge leap of faith to believe that Calzaghe could do the same thing if he were facing a much younger Jones. Maybe if Jones was injured or something, maybe then Calzaghe could have beaten him in his younger days, but not against a prime Jones.
It seems just absurd to even consider that happening. Jones would heap on such an overwhelmingly vicious beating on Calzaghe that it would be terrible and sad to witness. I would hope that someone would step in and halt the fight to save Calzaghe from the beating that was being inflicted upon him by the young Jones’ lightning fast punches.
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