By Scott Gilfoid: 42-year-old Antonio Tarver called out Joe Calzaghe for a fight, saying to the South Wales Argos “I was the only one that could beat him, that;s why he avoided me. He got dropped by Roy [Jones] and [Bernard] Hopkins. I would’ve knocked out feather-punching Calzaghe. He couldn’t beat me period and I hate I didn’t get a chance to prove it.”
Perhaps Tarver could have beaten Calzaghe if given the chance. We’ll never really know because like a lot of top fighters that fought in the same era as Calzaghe, Tarver was never given a chance. Hopkins and Jones got fights against Calzaghe, but only when both were in their 40s and not the same fighters they once were in their primes. And Calzaghe’s win over Hopkins in 2008 was very questionable at best.
I had Hopkins winning that fight by a close margin based on his cleaner landing shots in addition to his knockdown of Calzaghe. But Tarver isn’t the only one that didn’t get a shot at Calzaghe. Had Calzaghe fought Chad Dawson, Kelly Pavlik, Andre Ward, Lucian Bute, Carl Froch or prime versions of Hopkins and Hopkins, he very would have lost. But Calzaghe fought at super middleweight division during the dead period for the division when few boxers wanted to fight at that weight and there were few talented fighters.
Calzaghe said this “I love how fighters are calling me out three years after I quit. I get it, it’s all about money and a payday. In your dreams, Antonio. Didn’t you get destroyed by Hopkins before I beat him?”
Tarver doesn’t need the money. He just wants to take on Calzaghe to prove that he was the better fighter and is likely unhappy that he couldn’t get a fight with him when he was still fighting. I can’t blame him for wanting to still fight him to prove that he was better. We saw Tarver do that recently with Danny Green, who he easily beat by a 9th round stoppage last July. Calzaghe is just another name that Tarver wants to defeat to show that he was the better man. You can’t blame him for wanting to expose Calzaghe.
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