By Michael Lieberman: Let me start off by saying that I’ve always been a huge fan of Joe Calzaghe. Indeed, up until his fight with Bernard Hopkins last April, I thought Calzaghe was one of the finest boxers of all time. However, my thoughts have changed since the Hopkins bout, and now that Calzaghe had decided to fight a badly faded Roy Jones Jr., I’ve lost whatever respect I had for him as a fighter. The fight with Hopkins, who was forty-three at the time of the bout, was wrong and something I consider ill-advised for Calzaghe to take. Sure, I can understand him needing the money, because who doesn’t?
But it wasn’t as if there weren’t other fighters out there for him, such as Kelly Pavlik, Jermain Taylor, Lucian Bute or a rematch with Mikkel Kessler. By choosing fighters in their 40s, or late 30s, makes Calzaghe look as if he’s desperate for money.
If that was the case, he should have chosen his opponents a little more wisely while in the prime of his career and instead of fighting low marquee name fighters like Mario Veit, Tocker Pudwill, Evans Ashira, Miguel Angel Jimenez, Will McIntyre, Rick Thornberry, Juan Carlos Jimenez Ferreyra, and Branko Sobot, to name just a few of the lack of big name opposition. If Calzaghe wanted to make a ton of money, he should have skipped over easy title defenses over fighters like this during his long reign as super middleweight champion and should have gone after Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr. while they were still in their prime.
I don’t for a second feel that he would have beaten either of them, especially after he almost lost to a 43 year-old Hopkins, but at least he would have made a bundle fighting them. Believe me, I’d rather take that option than to waste my time fighting opponents that no one has ever heard of or even cares about. It’s somewhat shocking to say the least to look at most of the fighters that Calzaghe has wasted time fighting while a champion.
Personally, I wouldn’t have done it. I would have said, no thank you, please line me up a fight with someone that the public actually cares to see me fight and someone I can make a lot of money fighting. Even if I lost the fight, which I probably would very badly if I was Calzaghe against a fighter like Jones or Hopkins, but at least I’d know where I stood as a fighter, and I’d have made a lot of money early in my career. However, to stick around in the last stages of his career now focusing on aged fighters like Hopkins and Jones, just seems unfair to the boxing public, as well as himself.
If he didn’t do it right earlier in his career when he should have, he should forget about it and take the best fight he can, namely a bout against Pavlik. What is there to gain by taking on a fighter well past his prime like Jones and Hopkins, fighting them and adding their name to his long list of victims? Although some boxing fans – translations: the ignorant ones – will think, wow, Calzaghe beat Jones and Hopkins.
However, the boxing fans that actually know the sport, like me any many others, will see that Calzaghe beat both Hopkins and Jones at the end or their careers, and even then could barely beat them, and will be put off by it. I don’t about the other boxing fans, but for me I’m going to be putting a mental asterisk by Calzaghe’s name whenever I see it, saying to myself, disregard the unblemished record because he never fought a prime Jones, Hopkins or other big name fighter like Julian Jackson, Taylor or Gerald McClellan.
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