By Michael Lieberman: For his two victories over the prehistoric fighters Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr., I have to give Joe Calzaghe my vote for the number #1 fighter of the year. There were a couple of others that came close, but Calzaghe took the cake with his wins over the two 40ish fighters, showing that he has enough ability to beat two of the best fighters of the 90s, even though both are clearly on the downside of their careers.
Hopefully, Calzaghe fights someone next that isn’t ready to collect their pensions. The win over Hopkins is a little bitter sweet for Calzaghe, because most Americans, including myself, feel that Hopkins won the fight and was given the rawest of deals by the judges. At issue here, was that Hopkins not only landed the harder punches all fight long, but he also knocked Calzaghe down as well.
If that doesn’t translate to a win, I don’t know what does. However, Calzaghe got the win, no matter how tainted it might be, and moved onto his showdown against the 39-year-old Jones. The choice of Jones as an opponent was a rather curious one for Calzaghe, given the fact that Jones had lost three out of his last six fights going into his fight with Calzaghe, and hadn’t had a win over what I consider to be a top opponent in five years.
With excellent fighters like Chad Dawson, Mikkel Kessler, Jermain Taylor, Lucian Bute, Carl Froch, Librado Andrade and Jean Pascal to choose from, Calzaghe opted to fight Jones instead. The fight seemed like a waste of time, but whatever, he probably knows more than I do what he’s doing.
However, I’m not quite sure that the boxing fans were too enamored with his selection, many complaining that Calzaghe was just trying to pad his wallet as much as he could before getting out of the sport.
Instead of seeking out a real threat, someone that would guarantee and exciting and competitive fight, Calzaghe chose a fighter that is well past his prime. To top it off, Calzaghe would later say that boxing is dying, yet not looking at his own part in making that happen with fights against aging fighters and a career fought mostly against soft European fodder rather than talented fighters like a young Jones and Hopkins.
In my experience, a fighter is judged by the quality of his or her opposition, and if the large part of their career has been saw them build up a record against less than stellar competition, then I see their record as bogus, unreal and essentially misleading.
When you’ve dug a big hole, fighting a lot of worthless opposition, then the worst thing you can do is to continue doing the same thing as before, and then complain bitterly afterward that the sport is dying. To me, that seems like a copout as well as a lack of incite about his own part in it.
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