By William Mackay: You can include me in for one of those people who are less than impressed with the level of opponents that unbeaten super middleweight Joe Calzaghe has faced in his career. In looking over the mostly average fighters that Calzaghe has built up his unbeaten record on, I see few fighters of worth on the list that jump out at me. I can’t help but be left with the general impression that Calzaghe has either been carefully managed, steered clear of top fighters in his career like Julian Jackson, Bernard Hopkins, Gerald McClellan, Antonio Tarver and James Toney, or he just didn’t care to fight them.

Why Calzaghe didn’t step in earlier in his career and make an effort to fight these types of fighters is a mystery to me, because his ring record has all the hallmarks of an inflated one from what I can see of it. With wins over Tocker Pudwill, Mger Mkrtchian, Mario Veit, Branko Sobot, Will McIntyre and Kabary Salem, to name just a few, there seems to be an almost total lack of substance.

You’d like to think that Calzaghe would have stepped forward years ago, and sought out McClellan, Jackson, Toney, Jones or Tarver as an opponent, because these were some of the top fighters in the 90s, ones that a fighter like Calzaghe should have been fighting if he wanted to prove his worth and enhance his credibility as a fighter. Instead, however, we got to see him fight a ton of marginal fighters with an occasional decent fighter mixed in every once in awhile. Even with the decent fighters that Calzaghe he faced in his career, like Richie Woodhall, David Starie and Byron Mitchell, I doubt any of them would give Jackson, McClellan, Toney, Tarver or Jones any trouble whatsoever and would likely be taken out quickly in a one-sided fight.

Other than those fighters on Calzaghe’s list, he fought Chris Eubank at the very end of his career, and beat fighters like Robin Reid, Jeff Lacy, Peter Manfredo Jr., Sakio Bika and Mikkel Kessler, none, unfortunately, who I consider anywhere near the talent level of a prime Hopkins, Jones, Jackson, Toney, Tarver or McClellan. Indeed, I see those fighters literally toying with every opponent that Calzaghe has faced in his career and arriving at the same identical unbeaten record as him. If they were to do this, of course, they, too, would probably be questioned about whey they didn’t face better fighters in their career.

In a recent interview with Steve Bunce, Bernard Hopkins asked whether he thought that Calzaghe was one of the best fighters in his era, and Hopkins without even having to think hard on it, fired back with “no,” as the answer to the question. Obviously, Hopkins was probably thinking of the same things that I did about Calzaghe having faced less than impressive opponents during stretches of his career, making it hard to see him as an all time great despite him having an unblemished record. Of course, Hopkins isn’t exactly an unbiased source, for he was not too long ago beaten by Calzaghe in a close 12-round split decision, one that Hopkins isn’t too happy about.

Calzaghe beat him, there’s no question in my mind about that, but the fact that he had to struggle to defeat a forty-three year old Hopkins – and not a prime one – left me with the feeling that Calzaghe isn’t nearly as good as his record would indicate. If Calzaghe had faced and beaten McCellan, Jackson, Toney, Hopkins, Tarver and Jones in their primes, I would easily consider him an all time great fighter, but the simple fact of the matter is, he didn’t. Instead, Calzaghe has wins – a whole lot of them – over much less impressive fighters as those fighters, which leaves me with the sad conclusion that his record is badly inflated.

But strangely, Calzaghe’s lack of credible opponents never seemed to attract attention until recently, partly because he has fought in relative obscurity in Europe where there has been less media coverage of boxing beamed into the U.S. With the attention now fully on Calzaghe for his decision to fight a 39 year-old Roy Jones Jr. rather than the unbeaten Kelly Pavlik, one of the best fighters in boxing, I think it’s almost imperative that Calzaghe take the fight in order to rectify his lack of real quality opponents during the majority of his career.

I doubt that he will, though, because he has said publicly that the Jones fight will be his last, but he really needs to reconsider his decision if he’s at all concerned with his precious legacy. There would be no problem if he had fought talented fighters like McCellan, Jackson, Toney, Hopkins, Tarver and Jones in their primes, but he somehow never got around to do that. For that reason, I think that Calzaghe needs to do the utmost to fight every good fighter he can, starting with Pavlik to try and leave a lasting impression on his boxing career.