By Scott Gilfoid: After carefully guarding his precious legacy as if it were the crown jewels or something, unbeaten Joe Calzaghe (46-0, 32 KOs), seems to have undid all the accolades that he might have received with his recent comments about the sport of boxing dying. With that comment alone, it made it seem as if Calzaghe, who is leaning towards getting out of the sport and retiring, is self-serving chap, someone who is ending his career after having made his fortune in the sport.
Instead of sticking around and trying to better the situation by giving fights to young up and coming stars like Carl Froch, Chad Dawson or fighting a rematch with Bernard Hopkins, Calzaghe is making negative comments about the sport that made him rich. You would hope that after a career in which Calzaghe faced mostly unknown mediocre European fighters in the safety of Europe, he would want to stick around and have some meaningful fights for a change, to try and make the best of what appears to be a greatly inflated record.
But that doesn’t look like it’s going to happen. The likely scenario is that Calzaghe will announce his retirement in a month or two, leaving his last fight to cement his important legacy, his bout against a badly over-the-hill, 39-year-old Roy Jones Jr. Not particularly appealing last fight if you ask me. Nor was his fight before that against a 43-year-old Hopkins, who many consider beat Calzaghe and was given the receiving end of a rotten decision.
When it’s all been said and done, there’s not a whole lot of things that jump out at you when you glance at Calzaghe’s long ring record, other than his fight with Mikkel Kessler, as well as all the many obscure fighters that litter the remainder of his resume.
You would think with a comment like the one that Calzaghe made about boxing, he would have spent his entire career having faced the best fighters in the world, not just in England, but everywhere. But I don’t even see him having beaten the best in England, much less the World. With fighters like Froch, a knockout artist with an impeccable record, and Clinton Woods, a good light heavyweight, out there, how can Calzaghe retire?
Beyond that, there is, as I’ve already mentioned, Dawson and Hopkins for him to fight. Anyone of those fighters would draw a lot of fan interest, and at the same time, increase Calzaghe’s so-called legacy, if he were to step up and fight them.
And his comments that he made about boxing, one would hope, would be soon forgotten after he had faced all his available big-name opponents. You really couldn’t ask any more from him if he were to man up and face these fighters, because in truth, there really wouldn’t be any more real threats out there for him to face, aside from a still-green Andre Ward, or champion Lucian Bute.
If Calzaghe is really all that good, however, he needs to stick around and fight all of them, doing his part to improve the sport of boxing rather than downgrading it like he’s done. He probably won’t, though. He’ll get out of the sport, leaving his legacy to rest on meaningless fights against Hopkins and Jones, which did little for the sport other than costing fans money to have watched them.
And all the opponents that Calzaghe could have and should have fought, like the aforementioned Dawson, Froch, Bute, Ward or a rematch with Hopkins, they’ll be left wondering why Calzaghe chose not to fight them.
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