By Scott Gilfoid: Joe Calzaghe (45-0, 32 KOs) has had an amazing career, staying undefeated throughout his long 15 year career and holding his World Boxing Organization (WBO) super middleweight title for an incredible 10 long years without one opponent even coming close to beating him. Almost all of his bouts have taken place in Wales, having only recently come over to the U.S for his hard fought 12-round split decision victory over Bernard Hopkins.
For many Americans, they were less than impressed with Calzaghe, in particular his slapping punches which looked pale in comparison to the hard, clean-landing shots from Hopkins. In the end, Calzaghe squeaked by with a narrow split decision due to Hopkins tiring out in the second half of the bout, and resorting to clinching and other such delaying tactics. Nevertheless, the slapping and lack of clean landing shots from Calzaghe made his U.S. debut more than a little disappointing, because fighters over here are usually expected to land harder punches in order to win. While Calzaghe was able to get the nod over Hopkins last time out, I have grave doubts that he will get a second win if he fights in a similar manner on November 8th against Roy Jones Jr.
I assure you, Calzaghe won’t score well with the judges if all he does is slap away at Jones, because the American judges’ generally look for harder, cleaner landing punches and will be possibly giving more rounds to Jones if he can land the better shots, even though he’ll no doubt be out-punched by Calzaghe in the fight.
There’s no question that Jones has no chance at trying to match Calzaghe’s high volume output. There’s few fighters that can, and essentially none in the super middleweight and light heavyweight class. Even in his prime, Jones wasn’t ever able to fight like that. With his incredible hand speed and excellent defensive ability, he never had to throw nearly as many punches as Calzaghe in order to win. Jones’ speed and defense were so great, he could win rounds simply by landing a handful of punches. The question here, though, is whether Jones can still land a decent amount of harder shots while at the same time making Calzaghe miss with many of his slaps.
In terms of technique, Jones is the much superior fighter. Sure, he’s unorthodox, but he’s quite effective at what he does and has essentially created a whole new style of fighting, which is now being copied by a number of younger fighters such as Sergio Martinez. Hands down, Jones is the better fighter between him and Calzaghe on technique alone. Calzaghe comes in square every time, throwing a massive amount of punches and leaving himself open for counter shots.
He’s gotten away with a lot of his bad form because most of his opponents up until the Mikkel Kessler and Hopkins bout, were slower European fighters. With Jones, all of Calzaghe’s defects will probably be exposed in the same way that Hopkins exposed Kelly Pavlik’s numerous flaws. In their primes, Calzaghe would have never stood a chance against Jones. However, it will be interesting to see if Jones has enough left at 39 to defeat Calzaghe.
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