By Scott Gilfoid: I should have expected it, Joe Calzaghe is hinting at retirement rather than moving forward against the much more formidable opponents like Chad Dawson, Jermain Taylor or a rematch with Bernard Hopkins. “I will make my final decision after the New Year but I will probably retire,” Calzaghe said to BBC Sport yesterday. Some people had thought that he would stick it out and continue fighting for a little while longer, but I figured he would do this.
Calzaghe has had a great career, beating a lot of mediocre fighters and just a few decent quality fighters. Having to get in the ring with Dawson, Taylor and Hopkins, however, probably doesn’t look to appealing to Calzaghe right about now, because those are fights that he very well would lose.
That’s why I figured he would retire rather than continuing with his career. Calzaghe looked bad against Hopkins, and appeared to lose the fight by a couple of rounds. He should have turned around and given Hopkins a rematch to try and straighten out the confusion and make it clear that he was the clear winner. Well, it doesn’t look like that will ever happen now.
In his last fight, Calzaghe took on 39 year-old Roy Jones Jr. in a fight that was a farce to begin with, given Jones’ faded skills. With fighters like Dawson and Kelly Pavlik available, Calzaghe opted to take the ancient Jones, and naturally, he beat him quite easily. If the Jones fight turns out to be the last fight of Calzaghe’s career, it would be poor way to end it as far as I’m concerned.
With the lack of quality fights on his resume, Calzaghe is badly in need of five or six career-defining bouts against the best fighters in the middleweight, super middleweight and light heavyweight divisions to cement his legacy.
Starting with a fight against Dawson, Calzaghe would do well to prove himself as one of the all time boxing greats in the sport. From there, a fight against Taylor, Lucian Bute or Hopkins should be his next move. He needs to fight each of them one by one until he erases all the big names in those three divisions.
Only then, should Calzaghe retire from boxing and not before. Ending his career now, with only fights against Hopkins, Mikkel Kessler and Jeff Lacy as his biggest fights, would be selling himself short and leaving a lot of questions unanswered about his ability.
Comments are closed.