By Michael Lieberman: Recently, Joe Calzaghe came out in an interview saying that that boxing is a dying sport, blaming it on a number of things like MMA. What he didn’t do, however, is take a good look in the mirror at his own self and seen that he has had a part in the sport dying as well. Rather than taking on fighters like Gerald McClellan, Roy Jones Jr. and Bernard Hopkins in their primes, as well as Nigel Benn, Calzaghe stayed in Europe, building up his unbeaten record over a ton of weak opponents that few fans have ever heard of.
Finally, at the end of his career, Calzaghe decides to get in the ring with Hopkins and Jones, both either over forty or nearing 40, meaning little at this stage. Bouts against Jeff Lacy, now shown to be a badly flawed fighter, and Mikkel Kessler, have become Calzaghe’s signature wins in his otherwise lackluster career.
The Hopkins fight was a disaster for Calzaghe, as Joe looked poor in winning a 12-round split decision over a 44-year-old Hopkins, a fight in which many people, including myself, felt that Hopkins got the win. Instead of giving Hopkins a rematch, Calzaghe claimed victory and moved onto a fight against 39 year-old Jones, who by this time in his career had been shot for at least five years and nothing like his former self in the early point of his career.
With real challengers like Chad Dawson, Carl Froch and Kelly Pavlik, continuously calling Calzaghe out, he says that he has nothing else to prove and is leaning towards retirement. At best, I’d give Calzaghe three good fights – Mikkel Kessler, Sakio Bika and Hopkins – in his entire career with the remainder being mismatches over mostly C and D class opponents.
The Jones and Hopkins fight don’t count as far as I’m concerned, because both fighters have aged too much to be considered a real victory. Now, instead of going after Dawson, Froch, Lucian Bute and Pavlik, Calzaghe is looking towards getting out of the sport. With so few career-defining wins on his resume, how can Calzaghe talk about boxing as a dying sport without putting a sizable portion of the blame on himself as well?
If he really believed that boxing was dying, why didn’t he stand on his own hind legs and seek out Jones, McClellen, Julian Jackson and Hopkins earlier in their careers? Instead of fighting opponents like Mario Veit and Tucker Pudwill, why didn’t Calzaghe go after one of the top fighters in boxing like Jones and Hopkins?
Now for Calzaghe to get out of the sport with so few significant wins on his resume, leaves a lot of questions unanswered about his career, and seems to taint it in the process. If he wanted to help boxing, wouldn’t it be right for him to seek out one of the best fighters in the light heavyweight or the super middleweight division and choose to fight them instead of someone like Roy Jones Jr.?
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