By Paul Zanon
THE longest reigning world super-middleweight champion in history, Joe Calzaghe CBE, ruled the roost for over a decade, registering an astonishing 21 world title defences during his unbeaten 46-0 run, and latterly left his mark Stateside with a final flourish at 175lbs.
In addition to admitting an aversion to heights and spiders, the pride of Wales, who was never stopped in almost 170 amateur and pro contests, endured a rocky start in the fight game but overcame occasional speed bumps on the road to greatness.
“My interest in boxing started because of my dad [Enzo]. He was a massive boxing and football fan and taught me the basics of boxing when I was about seven years old,” Calzaghe told Boxing News.
“I went to my first boxing gym when I was nine and – in terms of my first amateur fight – I certainly remember that one, because I lost it! I lost on a split decision, but I have to add, the lad I lost to, his father was one of the judges. I cried on the corner post when they announced the decision. I, however, beat him about five times after, though!”
But the Newbridge man admits his life wasn’t as smooth outside of the ring as he embarked on his teenage years. “I won my first national title, beating a British ABA champion and it felt amazing. Then, when I was around 12 or 13, loads of people stopped speaking to me at school. Even when I look back now, I find it hard to understand. The bullies would call me loads of different names and be very mean, which really used to get to me. It isolated me and made me feel horrible. It’s like I had two personalities.
“I felt so outgoing when I was in the boxing gym and then I’d go to school and be a totally different person. It’s not like it just happened for a few weeks. It happened for a whole year. However, everything happens for a reason and I look back and think, ‘It was meant to be.’ It toughened me up.”
Engaging in 120 amateur contests, Calzaghe only tasted defeat in 10. From 1990–1993, the ‘Italian Dragon’ won the ABAs three years on the trot, in three different weight divisions, progressing through welter, light-middleweight and finally middle. Surely the Hall of Fame fighter should have fought at the 1992 Olympics, but politics intervened.
“I got robbed from going. I was the reigning welterweight ABA champion in 1991 and was 18 years old. By 1992, there was no way I was going to make welterweight and needed to fight at middle. There was a middleweight boxer in Cardiff who I sparred with and everyone realised I was way better than him, but the selection committee was in Cardiff and we were from an unfashionable gym out of town. That was that,” he reminisced.
“I went on to fight in the ABAs in 1992 and stopped everyone I fought. I knocked out the late Dean Francis in the second round and stopped Glenn Catley in the final. I didn’t get to go to the Olympics, but is that a regret? It really isn’t. I’m not sure if I would have had the same hunger after coming back from the Olympics after maybe a hefty signing-on fee as a kid. Everything I ever did in my boxing career was tough. I had to work for absolutely everything.”
Turning pro with Mickey Duff, Calzaghe’s debut took place in October 1993 on the weather-hit Lennox Lewis vs Frank Bruno undercard at Cardiff Arms Park. “There wasn’t any nerves to perform in front of a large crowd, because I was on second or third and it was pissing it down with rain at an open air show! I stopped the guy [Paul Hanlon] in the opening round, which was neither here nor there, but what did stay with me that night was the atmosphere for the Lewis versus Bruno fight. The excitement and atmosphere in the stadium was something else and I remember thinking, ‘This is what it’s all about. Maybe one day I can do this?’”
By October 1995, Calzaghe had matured into a 13-0 contender, which included eight first-round stoppages. The Newbridge native duly took on Scot Stephen Wilson for the vacant British super-middleweight title and halted him in eight rounds at the Royal Albert Hall.
“I went into the fight very confident, maybe overconfident,” he said. “It was a bit of a messy fight to be honest. He had a decent boxing style and a good jab, but I was a bit too strong for him and stopped him in eight rounds. Getting that title was great, but I was fully focused on a world title. That was more of a stepping stone.
“I was actually more excited when I beat Mark Delaney to make my first defence, because he was undefeated and it was built up into a big fight. When I stopped him in the fifth, that got people talking.”
Two years later, Calzaghe battled veteran two-weight champ Chris Eubank for the vacant WBO 168lbs belt on the first ‘Full Monty’ show at Sheffield Arena. It would prove a career-defining clash and a wake-up call to the rigours of boxing.
“The WBO champion at the time was Steve Collins and I was pretty confident I could beat him, because I believed in my destiny,” he said. “I went to the first press conference in London and he turned up, sat down and then got up and announced his retirement. I like fighters that come forward, like Steve, so when Eubank was announced as the replacement, I was excited, but also nervous.
“Eubank liked to lean back and fire from different angles, and although I knew I’d be busier, I also knew it wasn’t going to be easy. I used to love watching [Michael] Watson, Eubank, [Nigel] Benn and Collins, but I looked at Eubank, in particular, as a very unpredictable and dangerous fighter.
“He’d been out of the ring a while, was making a comeback, but he was still a big threat. You also have to remember, although it was my 23rd fight, I was relatively inexperienced to be fighting for a world title. Apart from one fight, I’d stopped all my opponents, most of them early rounds, which meant I’d never really been forced to go in there and dig deep.
“In terms of tactics? I was at the press conference at the Grosvenor Hotel in London and I was so cocky, I said, ‘I’m going to knock him out.’ Eubank said he’d take me to somewhere I’d never been before – in the trenches. I laughed and said, ‘Yeah, yeah.’ Maybe I believed too much in my punching power, or my speed and my boxing ability.
“Well, first round, I catch him with a left hook and I drop him, then I tried to knock him out, which didn’t happen. About rounds, six, seven and eight I realised this guy was not going to get knocked out. I was shattered. It’s at that point I realised, these were the trenches he was talking about. Knocking him down in the first round was the ultimate false sense of security, as it turned out to be 12 hard rounds.
“I learned more in that fight than all the fights put together. I realised if I wanted to be a world champion for a long time, there’s no way I could ever go into a fight that reckless again. I needed to think about my defence, use my boxing skills and be more patient.”
Often contending with injury, Calzaghe faced American Byron Mitchell, a former WBA champion, in Cardiff in his 13th title defence, suffering his first career knockdown in the second round of an explosive encounter. “Like a lot of fighters I boxed, they’d either just lost a title or challenged for one and Frank Warren would put us together. Mitchell had just fought Sven Ottke for the IBF title and walked away with a bad decision, then three months later he was in the ring with me.
“That was the first time I’d ever been floored. I’d never even been dropped in the gym. I remember the referee counting in front of me, ‘Three, four, five…’ and thinking, ‘S***. I’ve been dropped.’ You don’t have long to process it. I had nothing to compare it with, because I’d never been dropped before.
“Thankfully, I had a great chin and my powers of recovery were good, which meant, when the ref counted to eight, my head was clear and I was straight back in there. I exchanged punches with Mitchell and thank God, I managed to catch him, get him on the ropes and threw what felt like 200 punches until the referee stopped it [in the second]. I was proud of that win. Eventually, pretty much every fighter will go down and it’s been said many times before, but it’s really all about how you come back that counts.”
Five title defences later, in March 2006, Calzaghe faced the man being touted in America as a super-middleweight Mike Tyson – IBF belt holder Jeff Lacy. But the build-up to the unification clash was not without its struggles.
“I was in great physical shape, because my world title and my career all hinged on that one fight. I knew that failure wasn’t an option,” said Calzaghe. “However, I’d injured my hand not long before the fight and couldn’t punch for a few days. I went to Harley Street and had an injection and they said I needed to rest it. I told Dad and mentioned that I was thinking about pulling out. He said, ‘You can’t f***ing quit. You’ll be branded as the biggest chicken in boxing, ever. Your hand is fine.’
“I went back to the gym, and Dad told me what was going to happen in the fight. He said, ‘This guy will throw one punch and you’ll throw five punches and then move. Forget what the papers are saying about him. It’s bulls***. It’s going to be one of your easiest fights and this is going to make you a superstar.’ Dad was my strength. I was going into a fight as the big underdog, but not according to him.
“I concentrated on my runs, doing the best times I’d ever done at 33 years of age. I was the fittest I’d ever been, even though there was still a piece of me that thought I might not fight due to my hand. Every time I was in doubt, Dad would pick me up, and it was like a weight off my shoulders. And as you know, the fight panned out exactly as he said. I won every single round [bar one] on every judge’s scorecard and put on a masterclass from the first to the 12th round.”
Calzaghe’s last title defence at 168lbs was another huge occasion against the fearsome WBC champion Mikkel Kessler at the then-Millennium Stadium, Cardiff, in November 2007. The ‘Viking Warrior’ from Denmark was as steely as advertised. “My hardest fight was Eubank, but Kessler was my toughest opponent. He was at his peak, was younger and undefeated. Not to mention, there was a lot of pressure for me to fight in my home stadium,” he said.
“It was a hard fight and I was unnecessarily too aggressive in the first part of it. He caught me with a couple of uppercuts in the fourth and I thought, ‘Yeah. He hits hard.’ That’s when I changed tactics, because if I had continued to fight that way, I would have been in trouble. So, I started boxing, using my jab, using my feints and being calmer, which allowed me to outbox him for the second half of the fight. Those tactics got me the win.”
Five months later, Calzaghe underwent a change of geography and weight division as he fulfilled a lifelong dream to fight in America against two elite names with careers headed in different directions. “The Kessler fight was my last at super-middleweight. I really struggled to make 168lbs and lost 34lbs during my camp for that one, which takes its toll. I spoke to Dad and said, ‘Two more things missing. I want to fight in America and I want to step up to light-heavyweight.’
“I’d been super-middleweight world champion over 10 years and obviously you get a lot of doubters who ask why I never fought Stateside. Many said, ‘Stay at home, Joe,’ thinking I didn’t want to fight outside of the UK, which wasn’t true. I think I was too dangerous for the big names, so I didn’t get many invites to go over. That’s just the way it was, until I beat Kessler. That put me on a new pedestal, because that fight was aired in the States.
“Not long after, the fight with Bernard Hopkins started to happen. He was a great boxer with some massive wins to his name and he also had a big mouth, which really helped with promotion! I went over to America, we had a bit of back and forth and that’s how fights are made.
“The Ring Magazine title was on the line, so there was added pressure to become a two-weight world champion [in Las Vegas]. Hopkins had that knockdown in the first round and the fight was quite close, but I felt in control and was the busier fighter. Thankfully, two out the three judges saw it that way, and I heard something I hadn’t heard in a very long time, ‘And the new!”
With light-heavyweight recognition in hand, Calzaghe travelled back to America in November 2008 for his swansong fight against Roy Jones Jr at the iconic Madison Square Garden in New York. “I’ve always said I wanted to be a fighter who retired from boxing, not boxing retiring me. There’s loads of people who ask, ‘Why didn’t you fight to 50 and become the first person to [retire at] 50-0?’ I’ll be honest. Yes, I had injuries, but I did everything I wanted to do at super-middleweight and fighting in Vegas and the Mecca of boxing, Madison Square Garden was the perfect way for me to finish off. I have no regrets.
“The Jones Jr fight was quite surreal, because I was enjoying it whilst the fight was going on. Well, that’s apart from getting knocked down in the first round! After about the third or fourth round, I started counting down the rounds in my head, thinking, ‘Just enjoy it. This is it.’ It’s hard to explain how powerful those emotions were.”
Sixteen years after throwing his last professional punch, Calzaghe has no intention of making a comeback. Or does he? “No chance,” laughed Calzaghe. “Would I get in the ring with Jake Paul? Let’s say for £10 million. That would keep me happy. As long as I don’t have to make weight for the fight, give me about four or five months’ training and I’ll be good!”
