By Scott Gilfoid: In a recent interview Joe Calzaghe (46-0, 32 KOs) said that he has big offers from Bernard Hopkins to come back for a fight, but that he’s not going to be returning to the ring because he feels that he’s “done everything” that he wants to do in the sport of boxing and doesn’t want to continue. However, it’s hard to agree with Calzaghe in that, because with his win over Hopkins being highly controversial with many people outside of the UK feeling that Calzaghe lost and with Chad Dawson still remaining out there, it seems that Calzaghe is getting out of the sport just when he’s presented with some very tough obstacles.
More and more, I can’t help seeing Calzaghe’s career being much like Sven Ottke (34-0, 6 KOs), the IBF/WBA super middleweight champion, who held onto the IBF title for six years defending it much in the same way as Calzaghe against mostly unimposing competition in his home country before retiring at a time when he was looking at facing some tough competition in the near future.
In the 10 years that Calzaghe held onto the WBO super middleweight title, you would think he would want to fight some real talent for a change instead of the mostly soft fighters he dined on while a champion in the WBO division.
If he cares about boxing, he’ll come back and fight Hopkins and Dawson. He won’t, though. If Calzaghe did come back, his precious legacy would be ruined because he’d take a beating against either one of those fighters and end up getting his pristine record tarnished with a loss.
Calzaghe feels that the super middleweight division has no great fighters and that he’s beaten all the great fighters in the past. I totally disagree with that. Lucian Bute, the IBF champion and Carl Froch and Karoly Balzsay are all good if not great fighters and I could see all of them beating Calzaghe if he were to step up and take them on.
He won’t, of course. It’s easier to beat a bunch of some opponents during the deadest years of the super middleweight division and then retire and claim there’s no one out there to fight.
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