By Scott Gilfoid: For some people when they see Joe Calzaghe’s unbeaten 46-0 record they think of a fighter they consider to be an all time great, someone along the lines of a Rocky Marciano, Sugar Ray Robinson or Muhammad Ali. After all, there are few fighters that could amass an accumulated record of wins like Calzaghe accomplished in his career. But in getting all these wins, it leaves with a couple of thoughts: Either Calzaghe was an exceptional fighter who beat everyone that was put in front of him or he was lucky to have fought largely marginal fighters with the exception of a few good opponents during his entire 16-year career.
For diehard fans of him, the former is a bitter pill that they probably don’t want to swallow or even think about, because it’s painful to have to face the thought that someone that they looked up to and deeply respected all these years might not have been the real deal.
Now, I really like Calzaghe a ton as a fighter and have a lot of respect for what he’s accomplished during his long career, but I can’t see him as being an all time great given his lack of high quality opponents during the course of his career.
I’ll give it to him for fighting Jeff Lacy, Bernard Hopkins and Mikkel Kessler shortly before he retired, but those fighters don’t erase nine years of Calzaghe’s best years of his career in which he fought few fighters that I would consider worthy of an all time great. Missing during those years were names like Roy Jones Jr., Bernard Hopkins, Nigel Benn, James Toney, Mike McCallum, Montell Griffin, Virgil Hill, Lou Del Valle, Reggie Johnson, Antonio Tarver and Gerald McClellan.
Those are the kinds of names that I would have expected Calzaghe, if his “0” is to have any kind of significance, could have and should have fought. As such, I see his unbeaten record as having little meaning and more of a case of a padded record than one earned based on fighting worthwhile, meaningful fights against top fighters.
In my view, Calzaghe’s unbeaten record was build on the backs of lower quality opposition, which had to have made keeping his unbeaten record that much easier. It’s unfortunate now that Calzaghe has chosen to retire without getting out of the sport on a strong note by facing Chad Dawson in a fight that would have meaning not only to boxing fans but for the legacy of Calzaghe, something that I feel is badly in need of defining fight to try and pump it up.
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