By Michael Lieberman: After watching this week’s Steve Bunce boxing special, I’m more than a little confused about who’s telling the truth between Joe Calzaghe and Kelly Pavlik in terms of whether or not Calzaghe ever offered a fight to Pavlik in the past. According to Calzaghe, he twice contacted Pavlik about a fight in the past but he failed to take the bait. For his part, Pavlik is saying that Calzaghe has never once offered to give him a fight, and is just trying to “save face” by saying that he offered Pavlik a fight which he wouldn’t accept. One thing is clear, however, Calzaghe clearly isn’t interested in fighting Pavlik anymore, if he ever was to begin with.

Calzaghe is more interested in making easy money, saying “I deserve to get the biggest fights of the day…I want to retire and keep my looks intact.” The part where Calzaghe said that he’d like to keep his looks intact, seems to give me the impression that he doesn’t want to fight Pavlik because he understands how hard such a fight would be and would potentially risk getting hurt by him.

Although Calzaghe says he offered Pavlik a fight in 2006, there’s no evidence to show that he ever did this, and we only have Calzaghe’s word on this. Somehow, Calzaghe just doesn’t come across as that believable because he seems so intent on retiring without facing Pavlik, a fighter that is a very real threat to him despite him saying that he’s unproven and overrated.

How a fighter like Pavlik could be considered unproven and overrated after twice defeating the likes of Jermain Taylor, stopping Edison Miranda, Fulgencio Zuniga and Bronco McKart, is a mystery to me. In truth, I’d give anyone of those fighters an excellent chance of defeating most, if not all, of the opponents that Calzaghe has faced in his boxing career. From what I can see of the two fighters’ records, Calzaghe is the one that is unproven. He’s only beaten one could fighter – Mikkel Kessler – and the most of them pretty average.

We’ll soon probably see one of Calzaghe’s best wins, his defeat of Jeff Lacy in 2006, be put in perspective when Jermain Taylor fights Lacy and likely knocks him out in short order. If Calzaghe thinks that Pavlik is overrated, then he needs to take a good look in the mirror because Pavlik is dominating his opponents, who I consider to be a whole lot better than the mostly Euro fighters that Calzaghe was served up during his career, in a much more impressive manner than Calzaghe has.

Actions speak louder than words, and what Calzaghe’s reluctance to fight Pavlik seems to confirm for me is that Calzaghe is afraid of Pavlik, probably afraid of being beaten to a pulp like his fellow countryman Gary Lockett was by Pavlik in June. Ending a career on a losing note is obviously something most fighters would naturally want to avoid having happen, but then again fighting an entire career against less than what I consider stellar opposition is far worse. After all these years, this is Calzaghe’s one big chance to fight a real legitimately talented fighter, not some old, over-the-hill fighter brought in to give Calzaghe another big payday.