By Scott Gilfoid: When former WBO super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe retired a week ago, he chose a time in his career when he just happened to be facing one of the biggest threats of his career in IBF light heavyweight champion Chad Dawson who was very interested in fighting him. Not only was Dawson interested in mixing it up with Calzaghe, many boxing fans from around the world wanted to see Dawson and Calzaghe fight.
But instead, Calzaghe chose to retire rather than fight Dawson. So my question is: did Calzaghe choose to retire because he was facing Dawson, a fighter that appeared to better skills than Calzaghe in every department except for perhaps on the defensive side of things.
To be sure, Dawson would have been a tough fight for Calzaghe, but would Joe go out of the sport running from him rather than fighting him? Is that why Calzaghe retired from the sport? I’d hate to think that Joe would have chosen the path of least resistance, selecting to retire rather than taking the bull by the horns and facing this challenge head on with courage.
From appearances, Calzaghe chose a strange time to choose retirement. I mean, look at this way: You’ve fought an entire career having been lucky enough to face only a handful of what I would consider good fighters, and then in the last couple of years you defeat Jeff Lacy, Mikkel Kessler, and a 40ish Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr., with these handful of fights pretty much being the high points of his career.
That’s not too good if you ask me. So when the 26-year-old Dawson emerged as the best fighter in the light heavyweight division, and believe me, he’d been there prior to Calzaghe’s fights with Hopkins and Jones, why wouldn’t Calzaghe step up to the plate and take him on? This is the big question that sticks in the craw of many boxing fans.
This was a fight that screamed out for Calzaghe to take, especially given that he’d fought two older legends in Hopkins and Jones in his last two fights, and it seemed smart to want to give the fans something special to end his career on. Of course, we can never know for sure why Calzaghe chose to not fight Dawson, but it’s strange nonetheless that Calzaghe opted to fight Jones in his last fight, leaving Dawson alone, isn’t it?
Ultimately, I think this will hurt Calzaghe’s legacy, because not only did he finish his career on a weak note by fighting Jones rather than Dawson or someone like Carl Froch, but Calzaghe already had a problem of having long stretches of his career filled with fights against fighters that I, and many other boxing fans, felt were weak opposition.
So the rest is history. Instead of fighting Dawson, Calzaghe bowed out of the sport with a fight against Jones, letting that be the cap stone of his career. Calzaghe could have finished strong, telling us something about himself but retiring, but instead chose an easy fight against Jones rather than taking a risk by fighting Dawson. So, did Calzaghe retire because of Dawson or was it simply the time to get out?
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