By Eric Thomas: According to the latest boxing news, undefeated Joe Calzaghe (46-0, 32 KOs) might stage a comeback at a later point if the money is right. According to The Telegraph, both Sugar Ray Leonard and Frank Warren think Calzaghe might be tempted if he receives a big enough offer. How long this might take is unknown, but if Calzaghe is going to make a comeback, it would presumably come in a year because after that he would likely not come back unless his financial situation suddenly deteriorated rapidly for fear of losing.
The problem in getting Calzaghe back in the ring at this time is that there’s not many popular fighters with enough clout in the middleweight, super middleweight or light heavyweight divisions. Chad Dawson, perhaps the best fighter in the light heavyweight division, is still at an early point in his career and is still unknown to many of the casual boxing fans of the sport.
He may have the best talent in the division, but other than his fights against Glen Johnson and Antonio Tarver, Dawson has faced few other important fighters. It may take a number of years for Dawson to fight enough opponents to build up a big enough fan base to make a fight against Calzaghe viable.
That could change if someone like Jermain Taylor, Roy Jones or Kelly Pavlik fought Dawson in an exciting fight, but that’s probably not going to happen. Calzaghe probably wouldn’t be willing to wait long enough for Dawson to finally make a name for himself, so I don’t expect that Calzaghe would even consider coming out of retirement to face Dawson.
If Calzaghe did face Dawson, Joe would probably want a huge payday, probably even bigger than his fights against Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr., because Dawson would appear to be a much bigger threat to Calzaghe than either of those two fighters by virtue of Dawson’s size, youth, speed and power.
Hopkins might be the type of fighter that Calzaghe would come out of retirement again, but the fight would have to happen soon, because Hopkins is 44, and he probably will start seeing an erosion of his skills in the next year or two with the natural aging that occurs for people in their mid 40s. It’s doubtful, though, how much fan interest – or money – there would be in a rematch between Calzaghe and Hopkins, because the first fight was a terrific bore and frankly painful to watch.
Some of that had to do with Hopkins constant clinches and the flopping around he did after getting hit with low blows, but Calzaghe didn’t look good either with his slapping. Overall, the fight looked like a bad match-up between two fighters whose styles didn’t mesh well with one another.
I doubt that the money or interest would be there for Calzaghe fight against Taylor, because Jermain is still in the rebuilding stages of his career since losing twice to Pavlik in recent years. Pavlik, too, is coming off a loss and it might take him a considerable amount of time to undo the damage from his loss to Hopkins. A fight against Calzaghe would probably not be something that would bring in enough money to lure Joe from retirement. It would have been great before Pavlik’s loss to Hopkins, but not now.
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