By Dan Ambrose: I don’t know about any of you, but I thought the sole reason that Joe Calzaghe was fighting Roy Jones Jr., rather than Kelly Pavlik, was so that he could get the biggest payday possible while on the way out the door in the sport. Did I miss something? If anyone thinks for a second that a win over Jones, who is 39, almost 40 and hasn’t looked good in the ring in ages, will prove anything other than the fact that Calzaghe is good enough to beat a faded Jones, then I they need a wakeup call.
Don’t get me wrong, Jones was a great fighter in his day, much better probably than Calzaghe can ever hope to be, but he’s aged a little quicker than Calzaghe, probably due to all the hard fights that Jones has had over the years and he’s not nearly at the level he was years ago. A win is a win, and Calzaghe will always have the ‘W’ next to his name in his record book for Jones, if he beats him, but where’s the victory in beating him at this stage? In a way, it reminds me a lot of Oscar De La Hoya’s fight against Manny Pacquiao. Sure, De La Hoya will probably win, and get paid well in the process, but he won’t likely win much of any respect from fans for having beaten such a small fighter like Pacquiao.