Joe Calzaghe's Lasting Legacy

On Saturday, Sakio Bika, a durable Cameroonian-born Australian, will be the 19^th challenge of Joe Calzaghe’s nine-year reign as World super-middleweight champion. Following his victory last March over Jeff Lacy of Florida for the International Boxing Federation title, the Welshman was hailed as the best post-war British boxer and praised by Lacy’s trainer Dan Birmingham who described Calzaghe’s performance as the most efficient he had witnessed in more than 30 years in boxing. This week, Calzaghe was presented with a Ring magazine belt in recognition of his effort against Lacy.

Calzaghe does not seek the limelight. Raised from the age of two in the part of Wales where you can look out over the valley towns Cwmcarn, Abercarn and Newbridge, he’s a valley boy. “It’s perfect here, quiet and peaceful. I’m a fighter not a celebrity. I socialize, but I don’t go out of my way to be seen,” he told Brian Doogan of the London Sunday Times. “I’m not into celebrity and going to big movie premieres. I’m a fighter. When people get the two confused, that’s when they get distracted. I keep my feet on the ground and I train like I’ve always trained. I train like the challenger, because this is what it is: another challenge for me.” 

When Calzaghe watches a DVD of the Lacy fight, something he has done dozens of times, it strikes him that if he was Lacy he would never have fought again after taking such a hammering. “If that was me,” he told Doogan as the cameras focused on Lacy’s bruised features in the 9^th round, “I would never box again. I know in my heart I could never do it. To get beaten is one thing, but to be beaten that way…in boxing so much rides on your self-belief, and there is no way a beating like that is not going to shatter a man’s confidence.”

Persistent hand trouble prevented Calzaghe from establishing himself as a fighter of the highest class. Lord Jack Brooks, president and former chairman of the British Boxing Board of Control says, “I’ve felt all along that Joe is the best fighter we’ve produced and the quality of his performance against Lacy didn’t surprise me.”

Calzaghe was the outsider in the betting when he fought Lacy even though he held the WBO title and had not lost since he was 13. “People would say, ‘There’s Calzaghe in another crap fight,’” he told Doogan, “but they didn’t know the circumstances. They didn’t stop to think about the problems of going through a divorce as I’m in there struggling and getting knocked down against (Kabaray) Salem.

On a radio programme this week I was asked whether Calzaghe’s promoter Frank Warren had a case for believing that his fighter should be named BBB Sports Personality. “Who else in Britain can claim to have led their field for nine straight years?” he asked.

The key word is ‘personality’. As Calzaghe told Doogan, he is more concerned about establishing a lasting legacy. “To be champion for a decade, to make 20, 25 defenses would be history.”