By William Mackay: It’s hard to believe that former super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe (46-0, 32 KO’s) won’t be making a comeback at least for one or two more fights. It’s been two years since Calzaghe, then 36, retired from boxing after beating a washed up 40-year-old Roy Jones Jr. by a lopsided 12 round unanimous decision in November 2008.

Given that Calzaghe was still in the prime of his career and fighting at a very high level, it seems strange that he would opt to retire just when the super middleweight division was heating up. It’s not like there wasn’t any challenges out there for Calzaghe to fight at the time of his retirement, as Kelly Pavlik, Carl Froch, Lucian Bute, Andre Ward, Andre Dirrell, Arthur Abraham and Jermain Taylor were out there waiting for Calzaghe to fight them.

Also, there was Bernard Hopkins, who Calzaghe defeated by a controversial 12 round decision in April 2008, was waiting on a rematch. Calzaghe said that he had no more challenges out there for him and that he had accomplished all he wanted to accomplish in the sport of boxing. His resume, though, was rather slim in terms of talent and substantial wins.

You can forget about a great number of Calzaghe’s opponents during his career because they were simply weak fighters who were fighting in one of the weakest divisions in boxing. It wasn’t until the last year of Calzaghe’s career that the super middleweight division heated up with a number of excellent fighters emerging.

Instead of fighting these guys, Calzaghe opted to retire. Of the best wins in his career, you can count only four – Jeff Lacy, Mikkel Kessler, Bernard Hopkins, and Sakio Bika. As for the rest of the guys that Calzaghe fought, they were either not comparable to the quality fighters in the division today or at the end of their careers, like Jones and Chris Eubank.

At 38, Calzaghe is probably young enough to get in shape and fight the likes of Hopkins again. I think that would be a great fight and would help quiet the controversy about the outcome of their previous fight. At this point, Calzaghe is probably too far gone to beat fighters like Dirrell, Ward, Froch and Abraham – if he ever could in the first place. Those fighters would likely school and stop Calzaghe if given the chance to fight him.