By Simon Hirst: When Joe Calzaghe fought Jeff Lacy, Lacy was billed as the Tyson of the super middleweight division. He was unbeaten and had a fearsome reputation, which was half the fight won when entered the ring. In a unification bout with Calzaghe, Lacy was favourite to win. It came as quite a surprise when Calzaghe not only beat Lacy, but dominated him with ease and humiliated him.
Why would this put Calzaghe off fighting Dawson you may ask? Well perhaps Calzaghe feels he has nothing to gain of fighting Dawson. In the same way Dawson is built up to be a huge future star of the sport, he hasn’t beaten anybody who really sticks out. Johnson is an old veteran now and some argue with the decision that Dawson won, and he also beat a very old Tarver, who in the second fight gave Dawson a few problems.
Many now look back at the Lacy fight as not a big a win as what was made out at the time because Lacy has gone on since and looked very poor, struggling to impress in his wins and was outclassed by Jermain Taylor. It has now become apparent that Lacy was not the fight he was made out to be and thus, has taken away a lot of credit and substance from Calzaghe schooling him.
Now should Dawson fight Calzaghe and Calzaghe outclasses him, many might say Dawson was overrated and Calzaghe won’t get much credit of beating him.
I’m not making excuses for Calzaghe not fighting him. I personally believe Calzaghe’s fire and hunger for the game was low and he did feel it was worth fighting on for the sake of it, and if that is the case, then it should be applauded. He retired from boxing before boxing retired him.
That’s part of the problem, when a fighter in America gets beaten comprehensively, they lose a lot of credit. Jeff Lacy is a good example of this as mentioned above. Another boxer is Kelly Pavlik, who Bob Arum once infamously said would beat Marvin Hagler just days before Pavlik got schooled by Hopkins.
As big of a fan of Calzaghe I am, I still think he should have gone to America a lot sooner. By going to America, building a reputation, big fights would have been easier to come by because he would be a star. Whether he wanted to risk his title or stay unbeaten and felt the best way was to stay in the U.K, only he knows. There’s no point in crying over spilt milk however, because he is now retired and I, like some, may question some of his decisions, but it’s happened so not much can be done.
It’s quite ironic that a lot of American fans don’t rate Calzaghe, accuse him of being a fraud, and the rest, they want the likes of Pavlik and Dawson to fight him, the irony being if he is as bad as what he is made out to be, then he not really a big name on any of their records in terms of what beating him means. Only a hypocrite would disagree.
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