By Michael Lieberman: With two victories in a row over the old timers of the middleweight division, Joe Calzaghe (46-0, 32 KOs) is debating whether to continue on with his boxing career or not. Whether he does or doesn’t, I sure hope he chooses someone below 39 for his next fight because it’s hardly interesting to see him fight another fighter on or near his 4th decade on this planet.
If Calzaghe wants to prove something to fans, he might want to man up and fight International Boxing Federation light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson, who is considered the top fighter in the light heavyweight division at this point in time.
I doubt that Calzaghe will fight him, though, because Dawson is one tough customer and would be more than a match for Calzaghe in every category – speed, power, movement and boxing overall boxing skills.
That’s probably a loss for Calzaghe if he does decide upon fighting him, and that’s why I see Calzaghe running from that fight like the plague. Calzaghe, if he does continue with his career, will take on a much softer opponent, someone like Carl Froch, Jermain Taylor or Lucian Bute, all good fighters but not nearly in the class of someone like Dawson.
My guess is that Calzaghe will take one Taylor, because he’s probably the most popular of the bunch and is coming off a nice win over Jeff Lacy. Beating Taylor will prove about as much as beating the 39 year-old Jones did, showing that Calzaghe can beat a fighter that has already been exposed in the past couple of years.
I see Calzaghe fighting another four times in an effort to try and beat Rocky Marciano’s 49-0 mark, but the only way that I see Calzaghe being able to accomplish that is if he sticks to the beatable fighters because he will probably take a major beating if he steps foot in the ring with the young 26 year-old Dawson, that’s for sure.
I think it’s certainly doable for Calzaghe to break the record, because the super middleweight division has quite a few easy marks for him to pick over to add four more victories to his record. But in reaching the magical 50-0 mark, I see pretty much an inflated record with only a couple of real opponents among them and largely soft, ring fodder as his main opponents.
That is why Calzaghe, a fighter interested in his legacy, needs to try and stay away from taking on any additional easy marks like Jones so that he can actually prove something to people. If you look at Calzaghe’s record, you got to pay attention to whom he actually fought to build up that big record, because if you ignore it like many fans sometimes do, you get the impression that he’s invincible as a fighter.
Leaving aside Mikkel Kessler and Bernard Hopkins, Calzaghe has faced few opponents that I personally consider world class and worthy to be added to a record. Most of them don’t matter at all, at least in the sense that they don’t hold a candle to Dawson or a young Jones, Hopkins or Gerald McClellan, and that’s why Calzaghe needs to scrap his record, make no mention of it at all and start fighting the fights that count.
If it was me, I’d start over, throw out the wins except for against Hopkins and Kessler, and then try to build a real legacy by fighting nothing but the cream of the light heavyweight and super middleweight division. I’d even take on Kelly Pavlik, if I were able to get by Dawson and the best in the super middleweight division.
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