Calzaghe beats Jones at any age.

[Kobe Bryant]

I'm glad Joe blow is retiring. Tired of how much his beloved fans ride his ****.

[Dan...]

This isn't about who is champ and who isn't.

When a fighter wants to fight another fighter bad enough, the fight gets made.

Neither guy obviously wanted it.


Morales and Pacquiao got it on 3 times despite no major title being on the line.

Do you understand the situation though? I mean no disrespect to Joe Calzaghe when I say this, but in the late 90s, when the fight could logically have happened, Roy Jones was the best fighter on the planet and the man at 175 whilst Joe was defending a WBO belt at 168 in the UK and was relatively unknown outside of the UK. Do you seriously think Roy should have dropped everything and gone after Joe at all costs?

[Gorguruga]

Prime Jones would beat Prime Calzaghe but not in a dominating performance. Calzaghe is one of the better adaptive fighters out there so I think Jones would win a lot of early rounds but Calzaghe would win some of the later rounds. It would still be a pretty close fight, Calzaghe is so unorthodox it's difficult to train for him.

[Vasyl’s dad]

Do you understand the situation though? I mean no disrespect to Joe Calzaghe when I say this, but in the late 90s, when the fight could logically have happened, Roy Jones was the best fighter on the planet and the man at 175 whilst Joe was defending a WBO belt at 168 in the UK and was relatively unknown outside of the UK. Do you seriously think Roy should have dropped everything and gone after Joe at all costs?

I understand the situation, but it didn't stop Roy from fighting Richard Frazier or Lou Del Valle.

Who in the hell were they?


It takes two to tango and the blame can't be solely put to rest on Joe.

[Dan...]

I understand the situation, but it didn't stop Roy from fighting Richard Frazier or Lou Del Valle.

Who in the hell were they?


It takes two to tango and the blame can't be solely put to rest on Joe.

Frazier I will give you but Del Valle? Del Valle was a very good contender at 175 who actually held one of the major belts going in to the fight with Roy. That was a unification bout. He had also lost a pretty competitive UD to Virgil Hill - one of the top guys at 175 throughout most of the 90s.

You basically just implied to me in that post that Roy Jones should have bypassed a unification bout with Del Valle to go chasing Joe Calzaghe. What was Joe's status like at the time? Was he seen as a better fighter and more legitimate opponent for Roy than Del Valle?

[wmute]

This isn't about who is champ and who isn't.

When a fighter wants to fight another fighter bad enough, the fight gets made.

Neither guy obviously wanted it.


Morales and Pacquiao got it on 3 times despite no major title being on the line.

Call it champ, call it draw. Same point.

Calzaghe wanted the fight, he should have chased the fight.

Like Hagler went after Leonard, like Mayweather went after De La Hoya.

Roy was the champ, p4p #1, the draw and the one fighting in US.

[wmute]

I understand the situation, but it didn't stop Roy from fighting Richard Frazier or Lou Del Valle.

Who in the hell were they?


It takes two to tango and the blame can't be solely put to rest on Joe.

They were willing to fight Jones, and happened to fight in the same country.

[Vasyl’s dad]

Call it champ, call it draw. Same point.

Calzaghe wanted the fight, he should have chased the fight.

Like Hagler went after Leonard, like Mayweather went after De La Hoya.

Roy was the champ, p4p #1, the draw and the one fighting in US.

and like I've already said, Roy never wanted the fight either.

Blame goes to both guys equally.

[Vasyl’s dad]

They were willing to fight Jones, and happened to fight in the same country.

I didn't know boxing rings were exclusive to the us.

[FasTHarD]

NEW YORK (AP) -Joe Calzaghe remembers fighting in small halls in Britain, ducked by the world's best fighters, unable to get unification bouts and big paydays that he always believed he was due.

It was just a couple of years ago.

But now that the undefeated Welsh icon has ventured to America, dethroning two of its proudest champions of the past 15 years, Calzaghe finds himself thrust into the glaring spotlight - finally, at long last, even if a bit too late.

The popular Calzaghe battered and bloodied Roy Jones Jr. in a one-sided unanimous decision Saturday night in what Calzaghe has claimed will be his final bout. The victory at Madison Square Garden comes on the heels of a close decision over savvy veteran Bernard Hopkins in Las Vegas, proving after all these years that Calzaghe really could win anywhere.

"I'm not going to announce anything right now,'' Calzaghe said, when asked about retirement. "But I said before the fight this could possibly be my last night.''

If so, he left a delirious crowd of 14,152 on its feet roaring in approval.

Calzaghe (46-0, 32 KOs) overcame a flash knockdown in the first round, using his blazing hand speed and constant pressure to befuddle the 39-year-old Jones. Calzaghe opened a deep gash over his left eye midway through the fight, but by then it hardly mattered.

"Super'' Joe indeed looked super, all three judges giving him every round after the first.

"The pitter-pats were harder than I thought,'' Jones said afterward. "I don't know. He won the fight. He definitely won the fight.''

The numbers certainly backed it up.

Calzaghe threw a staggering 985 punches, landing 344 of them, to just 475 for Jones, according to CompuBox statistics. He had a massive edge in jabs, 122 to 12, and landed 224 power punches.

The total landed by Calzaghe was the most by a Jones opponent in 31 fights tracked by CompuBox.

"I knew I had to make Roy Jones respect my punches,'' Calzaghe said. "I think I did.''

Linear 175-pound champ said he doesn't fancy rematches, but Hopkins was sitting ringside and would love nothing more than to reprise a fight he still believes he won. Mikkel Kessler was also on hand, the Danish champion who gave Calzaghe everything he could handle in their super middleweight unification last year.

Then there's IBF champion Chad Dawson, who called Calzaghe out the moment the fight ended.

"Joe has a lot to be proud of and I for one am very impressed,'' Dawson said. "If Joe wants to have his grand farewell in Wales, I am ready to accommodate. My passport and world title belts are ready to travel across the pond.''

So, could there be another one left?

"I just stepped out of the ring 15 minutes ago. Let me enjoy the fight now before I think about another fight,'' Calzaghe said. "What do you think I am, man, a sadist?''

No, but perhaps a fighter who understands his moment in the spotlight is at hand.

Carrying the stigma of being a protected fighter throughout his career, unwilling to come to the United States to challenge Jones or Hopkins in their prime, the 36-year-old Calzaghe was cast as a great champion who couldn't shatter the ceiling of boxing immortality.

It didn't matter that he successfully defended his super middleweight title an astounding 21 times, one of the longest reigns in boxing history. Or that his awkward stance, incredible hand speed and seemingly boundless energy made him a fan favorite.

Calzaghe seems still to have a chip on his shoulder.

"It took me eight years to get a unification fight and I was more frustrated than anybody else,'' he said. "I'm so happy with what I achieved this year. That's all I can say now.''

For what it's worth, fellow British champion Lennox Lewis - who walked away from the heavyweight division in his prime - said Calzaghe should call it quits. Calzaghe's former promoter, Frank Warren, believes the affable Welshman will fight again.

Things are even less clear for Jones, the erstwhile pound-for-pound king who was written off three years ago only to mount a comeback of his own.

But his victory over an aging Felix Trinidad in January was made even more hollow by the beating he took at the hands of Calzaghe, a fighter still very much in his prime. Jones' own hand speed seemed diminished, his reflexes slowed, his ability to counter the relentless assault lacking.

Jones (52-5) has nothing left to prove, either, an eight-time champion in four weight divisions, and he sounded like a man resigned to defeat.

"I don't know what's next,'' he said. "I don't know.''

Melvina Lathan had all but lost her voice. The chairperson of the New York State Athletic Commission had spent the previous day helping to get the vote out for Barack *****, driving senior citizens to polling stations and cheering herself hoarse as the results came in. Now she was at the microphone in a Manhattan hotel room, using what remained of her vocal cords to introduce a couple of men whose appointment with history takes place tonight.

A former boxing judge who was at ringside for more than 80 championship fights and became the first African-American woman member of the commission a year ago, Lathan could not resist an allusion to the previous evening's euphoria. "I'm sorry I can't talk too much," she told the pre-fight press conference. "Last night I screamed myself out. But now, on the tailwinds of one of the most profound events in our country's history, comes Calzaghe-Jones."

Well, maybe. Until he fell to the fists of Antonio Tarver in Las Vegas four years ago, Roy Jones Jr certainly justified his status as the world's best pound-for-pound fighter. Now, at 39 years of age, on a run of three consecutive wins, he still commands a measure of respect and will need careful watching by his opponent. But Joe Calzaghe? Where, exactly, is the 36-year-old Welsh southpaw's place in history?

A professional record of 45 unbeaten fights over 15 years should speak for itself. Were he to beat Jones at Madison Square Garden tonight in his defence of the Ring magazine world light-heavyweight title, Calzaghe would be only three wins away from Rocky Marciano's record of calling it a day after 49 fights without defeat. Neither he nor his father and trainer, Enzo, would talk about retirement this week, but at least one expert believes that the widely predicted victory over Jones would be a good place to stop.

"It would be time to get out," Emanuel Steward, the legendary trainer of Thomas Hearns and Lennox Lewis, said yesterday shortly after arriving in New York, where he will commentate for HBO on tonight's events at the Garden. "What more can he accomplish? He's at the top. It's over. If he beats Jones and retires, he'll have that unbeaten record and his legend can only grow day by day as the years go by."

Calzaghe's deeds won him the BBC's sports personality of the year award last December, when voters impressed by the points victory over Mikkel Kessler that gave him the undisputed super-middleweight title in Cardiff's Millennium Stadium.

His deeds over time have won him an MBE. But there has been a sense that his reluctance to venture outside the UK - the exceptions being his bouts with Mario Veit in Germany in 2005 and with Bernard Hopkins in Las Vegas in April this year - delayed his chance to cement his reputation in the US.

"He's a very respected fighter here," said Steward, who particularly admired Calzaghe's performance in Manchester in March 2006, when he took the US fighter Jeff Lacy's titles away by winning 11 of the 12 rounds, only a deducted point causing him to forfeit the 12th. "What he did that night was one of the most talked-about performances in recent boxing folklore. He's a highly intelligent and quick-witted man, verbally and in the ring. He fights well at a distance and he can get up close and slip in short punches, and he breaks up the rhythm. His volume of punches is extraordinary - everybody knows that - but it's not just rat-a-tat stuff. He's hard to anticipate. And his condition is always second to none - he's been fit and strong for all his fights, which is unusual."

Bert Sugar, the legendary fedora-wearing, cigar-smoking, wisecracking 72-year-old former editor of Ring magazine, recently published a book - one of his dozens - in which he ranked the 100 greatest fighters of all time. But even with the benefit of a perspective that started to form in 1941 when, as a small boy in Washington DC, he saw Joe Louis beat Buddy Baer, he finds it difficult to place Calzaghe in boxing's pantheon.

"I'm a big fan of Joe," Sugar said, "but there were eight traditional weight divisions, but now there are 17 and there's a particular problem gauging the guys in what I call the halfway houses - super-this, junior-that. So Joe Calzaghe is better than any of the other super-middleweights. What is that - six people? The business of fighting across the pond is not such a problem. It's that we don't know who the hell, with the exception of Jeff Lacy, these people are that he's been fighting. That's your standard. Not where, who. You've got to be able to make the comparison. Now that he's fighting light-heavyweight I can look at an Archie Moore, I can look at a Bobby Foster, et cetera.

"Joe is an earnest, hard-working, out-hustling, out-muscling fighter. He has very brittle hands but his work rate is reminiscent of people like Henry Armstrong. It's just constant. He's moving, he's working, and in this fight you have to remember that Jones has always had trouble with left-handers. I think Jones will give him a fight for a while but I'm looking at Calzaghe to overwhelm him."

"Which Joe will turn up?" Enzo Calzaghe asked this week. "Even I don't know. Will it be the brawler, as he's shown on a few occasions? Will it be the master craftsman we saw against Jeff Lacy? Will it be the charismatic fighter? What I do know is that he will not, in any circumstances, fail at the last hurdle."