By Scott Gilfoid: This is kind of a subjective question, because for some boxing fans Calzaghe’s combination of his glittery unbeaten record and his 10 years of holding the World Boxing Organization super middleweight title is proof that Calzaghe was a good champion. I disagree completely with those people, and look more at the lack of quality fighters on Calzaghe’s record to make my conclusions about his time as a world champion.
There are obviously fighters who have held onto their titles for a much shorter time than Calzaghe, but I’m not referring to time having held a title in judging Calzaghe’s merits as a champion. After all, chances are Calzaghe might have only held onto his WBO super middleweight title for only one fight if he had stepped it up and fought a prime Julian Jackson, Gerald McClellan, Roy Jones Jr., or Bernard Hopkins.
I would be hard-pressed to believe that Calzaghe would have even been competitive with the likes of those fighters, but of course we’ll never know because he never ventured over the pond to fight them.
Instead of taking those fights and having to prove his self against the true best of the world, Calzaghe chose to fight opponents like Mario Veit, Kabary Salem, Evans Ashira, Mger Mrtchyar, Tocker Pudwill, Omar Sheika, Rick Thornberry, Juan Carlos Gimenez, and Luciano Torres.
Believe me, this is just a partial list of the fighters that Calzaghe chose to fight during a 10 year period. I haven’t even heard of most of those fighters and I’m astounded that Calzaghe chose to fight them. With talented fighters like Jones and Hopkins just across the sea, it would seem logical that Calzaghe would have raised a fuss and gone after both of them.
He didn’t, at least not until both were near or over 40-years of age. By then, the once blazing speed and incredible boxing skills had slowed down and eroded for both fighters. Hopkins aged much better than Jones Jr., but few people who believe that Hopkins as 43, the age in which Calzaghe fought him, was the same fighter he was when he was in his early 30s or late 20s.
As Calzaghe approached the end of his career, he finally stepped it up and fought several good fighters in Mikkel Kessler and Jeff Lacy, both decent opponents but not comparable to the fighter that Calzaghe should have been fighting earlier in his career.
In the final two years as a WBO super middleweight champion, Calzaghe had the opportunity to fight Carl Froch, easily the best super middleweight – besides Calzaghe – in the entire UK. But, instead of fighting Froch, which seems like the most obvious fight out there, Calzaghe chooses to fight Peter Manfredo Jr., a good 2nd tier super middleweight.
So even though Calzaghe held the WBO super middleweight title for 10 years or so, he fought precious few fighters I would consider talented and worthy of a title fight. That pretty much puts him in the class of being the worst champion ever as far as I’m concerned.
Calzaghe had his chance to be big, someone important, a fighter that could have achieved greatness by fighting Jones, Chad Dawson, Kelly Pavlik, Hopkins, Jackson and McClellan, but instead we saw Pudwill, Veit, Salem and many others like them. For me, that puts Calzaghe as the worst champion ever.
Why didn’t Calzaghe fight Dawson and those other talented fighters? Good question, but only he knows why not.
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