By Scott Gilfoid: Well, Joe Calzaghe (46-0, 32 KOs) finally announced his retirement today, and I can’t say I’m the least bit surprised. I figured he would do it rather than continue on and face Chad Dawson, a real threat and someone who would have likely beaten him black and blue if given the chance. Listing his family as being a big reason for his retirement, Calzaghe said to the BBC Sport: “My children wanted me to give up, plus my mum; That’s why I called it a day, and will go on to do something else.” Calzaghe, 36, left open the option of returning to boxing at a later date.
Calzaghe retires after holding onto the WBO super middleweight title for 11 years, but unfortunately, most of those years were spent facing less than impressive fighters in the division like Mario Veit, Will McIntyre and Branko Sabot.
Instead of taking on world champions Roy Jones Jr, Bernard Hopkins, James Toney, Gerald McClellan during the prime of their careers, Calzaghe stuck to facing lower quality opposition in the super middleweight division year after year. Finally, when Calzaghe did end up facing Jones and Hopkins, they were both near or over 40-years-old and arguably not the same fighters they were earlier in their careers.
Late in Calzaghe’s career, he stepped it up against Jeff Lacy and Mikkel Kessler, beating both of them by decision. It was hoped that Calzaghe would continue to seek out important fights like this, but instead of facing fine fighters like Carl Froch, Jermain Taylor, Chad Dawson, Lucian Bute, Jean Pascal, Andre Dirrell and Allan Green, Calzaghe opted to retire.
As such, his career legacy is more than a little tainted as far as I’m concerned because of the lack of big name fighters on his resume. He had the chance to help his legacy in the past couple of years, but instead went after Peter Manfredo Jr., and an old Hopkins and Jones. It’s too bad, because it would have been interesting to see how Calzaghe would have done against Dawson or the aforementioned super middleweights that I listed.
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