Calzaghe Still Believes There’s No Worthy Challengers for Him

By Boxing News - 07/26/2009 - Comments

calzaghe5573858By Michael Lieberman: In a recent interview with Walesonline, former WBO super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe sounds bitter as he dishes dirt on Carl Froch and says that there are still no worthy challengers to him. Calzaghe seems to be unaware Americans Andre Dirrell, Andre Ward, as well as Romanian Lucian Bute and German based super middleweight Arthur Abraham.

I hate to break this to Calzaghe, but I’d pick any one of those fighters to make a clean sweep of every opponent that Calzaghe has fought in his career, including Mikkel Kessler. And that’s not because Calzaghe faced a lot of quality fighters during his career, because he faced a whole lot of mediocre opponents.

As for the Super Six tournament that has been put together by Showtime and will be starting in October, Calzaghe said “I see the guys fighting now and I know I could beat them all.” Those are pretty bold words for a guy that struggled to beat a 43-year-old Bernard Hopkins and was knocked down by him as well as 40-year-old Roy Jones Jr.

Calzaghe saves his best comments for World Boxing Council super middleweight champion Carl Froch, saying that there’s no reason to come back because “I’m watching him get beaten up already, so I don’t need to bother.” Calzaghe is talking about Froch’s struggles to beat Jermain Taylor. Froch was getting beaten until the last 30 seconds of the 12th, which is when Froch was able to stop Taylor with only 14 seconds left in the fight.

Froch was fighting a good fighter in Taylor, and there’s no shame in struggling against a fighter like Taylor. After all, Taylor was a champion, you know? I think Taylor would have fought a life and death fight with Calzaghe if he was still around and might have had enough to take Calzaghe.

That’s how good Taylor is. Calzaghe, not satisfied with one comment about Froch, continued to pour it on, saying “He’s in the Super Six now and I don’t even think he will know his name by the time that’s finished. It doesn’t me coming back for that to happen.” It looks like Calzaghe doesn’t see Froch as winning the tournament by the sounds of it. I don’t disagree with him there, because Froch is going to probably struggle to make it out of the first round because he’ll be facing some tough fighters with a good chin.

But, I think Froch would do at least as good a job a Calzaghe would be if he were in the tournament. Both of them would be facing faster opponents like Ward, Dirrell and Taylor, and would have problems to get a win against any of them. I think Froch has the better chance than Calzaghe, because he at least would have a puncher’s chance because of his power.

All Calzaghe would have going for him is his hand speed,. Which wouldn’t be as good as Taylor, Dirrell and Ward. I think deep down, Calzaghe wishes he was in the tournament to see how he’d do, but he probably wouldn’t want to do it because of the risk involved.

It would mean putting his unbeaten record on the line against top quality fighters in the prime of their career rather than fighters on the slide like Hopkins and Jones. There wouldn’t be any soft touches in the tournament like Mario Veit for Calzaghe to feast on and look good against.



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