By Terry Dooley
This past Saturday night, Joe Calzaghe took what must surely be seen as a backwards step or two as he out-pointed a fighter who, all defense of his standing aside, is now 0-1-1 as a super-middleweight.
Sakio Bika was an unsatisfactory choice as a follow-up to the beating of Jeff Lacy in March. The scrappy, often foul-invested points win scored by Joe was even more unsatisfactory given the hand-picked opponent he faced.
Leading up top the fight there had been a lack of buzz here in Manchester. This is not necessarily a slur on Joe per se; it is just that somehow Joe had slipped under the radar. Bringing London ticket prices to the North was a puzzling move also.
A partial reason for the lack of buzz was due to the choice of opponent, for a man who is haunted by brittle hands and a dwindling shelf-life Bika is total bunk as an opponent.
However it is always best to take rumours of poor ticket sales - plus competition giveaways being used to fill seats - with a pinch of salt. Due to my being persona non gratis with Sports Network I had decided to purchase tickets for my partner and I in order to catch a glimpse of a Calzaghe – plus I wanted to see how well the show had sold.
My secondary question was partially answered as we entered the arena only to be redirected to a queue of people waiting for upgrades on their tickets. Our second-tier seat had been upgraded to a lower-tier seat.
The second-tier was covered under a black velvety blanket and completely closed-off, the lower-tier was in full use aside from three covered-up sections on the left-hand side of the arena. We were being packed tight for the cameras.
The quickness of the eye can deceive the mind so I held fire on any judgements for a while.
As people arrived it became clear that the show had sold well, yet it was not Hatton’d out by any stretch of the imagination. Still, once the main event drew near the crowd whipped up a decent volume of noise for the Joe.
That noise stayed fairly impressive throughout a contest I found to be a distinct let-down. Sakio Bika has probably found himself being bumped up into the upper-echelons of the division based on this fight and that is something that is unavoidable, our standards have slipped so badly these days.
Sakio is certainly not a top-class fighter, he is tough, crude and hittable, and in short he is the type of guy a fighter of Joe’s quality should be able to cleanly dominate. This was not the case on Saturday night as Calzaghe was forced to engage Bika in a torrid fight for the first defence of Joe’s newly won legitimate title.
At times Joe showed flashes of his higher ability, his winning work was certainly cleaner. In fact Joe’s most effective punch was a classy straight left to the body of Bika, it gave Joe a moment’s space to unleash the combinations that had bowed Lacy yet Joe found himself unable to get off with them time and again.
Some of the culpability for this staccato struggle must lie with Joe, Bika used some dubious tactics with the head (cutting Joe fairly badly in round four) yet he was duly punished. Bika was not entirely to blame for the messy clinching that will be my defining memory of this fight, it takes two to tango and Joe was wrestling inside himself, clearly he must not have had the strength to push Bika off so in the end he resorted to looking for the referee Mickey Vann to intervene.
Another problem Joe had in this fight is that Bika was timing him with heavy right hands; in fact in terms of stomach dips and thoughts of “Oh, this is interesting” I had Bika slightly ahead. Yet these odd dangerous shots were not enough to take the fight from Calzaghe, it was a relatively poor fight yet the right man won.
Conversely Bika’s pedigree was brutally exposed by the fact that his balance went whenever he threw that right hand, he seemed incapable of following it with the left hook needed to correct his balance and catch Joe with consecutive shots.
Right at the beginning of the fight Joe had allowed the Lacy fight to overspill into this one in the form of boorish showboating – although it must be said some people loved this, a person in front of me loudly declared that Joe, in dropping his guard repeatedly, was giving a boxing master class. The showboating was off-putting and pointless, Joe has the chin but not the persona to carry it off, showboating, for me, would have been putting Bika under lock and key and boxing his ears off.
Joe has now called for a battle with the recently retired Bernard Hopkins, Hopkins would have to drop the weight he packed on to fight Antonio Tarver, shed some rust and fight at Super-middleweight for the very first time (not to mention make a comeback). It was a strange call out, after beating Jeff Lacy Joe had called out Roy Jones, once upon a time Joe had seemed to feel that he did not need to seek these names out in order to find definition. It seems that was a mistaken view, Joe wanted the US names to become antiquary then he called them out.
Mikkel Kessler is the name that should be dropped most forcibly. As Joe was struggling with Bika Kessler was blasting aside Markus Beyer and unifying the WBA/WBA belts, this in turn makes Calzaghe seem the King of the Johnny come lately belts as he holds the IBF/WBO axis. Kessler seems a natural opponent yet he exists in the ephemeral never world called the European continent, a place Calzaghe feels no need to tread.
Consider, Joe assured us year after year that he had no need to fight the recently retired (maybe he will be called out next time) Sven Ottke. The logic went that Joe was number one at this time whilst Sven was gifted decisions week in and week out - in fact rumour has it that Ottke once left the ring in the tenth round of one of his title fights only to be given the last two rounds on all three cards.
In reality Ottke satisfied The Rings honourably balanced objectives for being a Champion by beating a top three ranked Super-middleweight as well as annexing titles (IBF/WBA) when he beat Byron Mitchell in 2003.
Like it, lump it, you cannot knock the logic, Ottke satisfied all the criteria for being Super-middle Number One, the only criteria he did not overcome – and it is an important one – is anti-German boxer bias predicated on the claim that German boxers are shy of travelling (yes right, check out Calzaghe’s passport, he fought a stiff in Copenhagen and complained about playing second-fiddle to Mike Tyson).
When Ottke retired Joe could have reasonably excepted to be seen as consensus Number One yet the fact is his standing had sunken so low, people forget this, that many felt he would be beaten by the one-dimensional title-holding novice Jeff Lacy.
That view was sorely mistaken as Joe battered Lacy from pillar to post this March to satisfy the most important of The Ring’s criteria, namely that they make up their criteria as they go along (or HBO does in terms of the heavyweight rankings).
As highly regarded as the Lacy result is there has never been a sense of perspective about it. People have compared it to Hopkins beating Felix Trinidad yet that is a mistake, Tito is one-dimensional sure yet if he is one-dimensional then Lacy must be transparent. That is not the only objection; bear in mind the fact that Hopkins put Tito, who was also ranked higher than Lacy P4P, out on his back; Joe never really did this with Lacy.
Lacy was gone from the early rounds yet Joe was never capable of sealing the deal, his hands were sore for sure yet surely it would have been better for Joe to sit on a few shots and put Lacy on his backside rather than throw hundreds of shots with injured mitts? I would say this is reasonable. The fact Lacy was there for the taking yet was not put away speaks less of Jeff’s chin and more of the fight itself, the deal was not sealed, it was an A performance, not the A+ Best of all Time win some people have deluded themselves into thinking it was.
Yet even when we take that fight as it stands it represents more than the moment Joe announced his partial dominance over 168lbs, it was also the first time he fought for a legitimate title, in short it was the moment Joe truly became more than a mere title-claimant. Given that salient fact it must be said that Joe stands at one defence of a true title, ITV and the press can insult the memory of the late, truly great, Joe Louis all they like yet the truth is that Joe is an eternity from bettering his record of consecutive defences.
This also goes in some sense for the aim of reaching Rocky Marciano’s magic 49-0. Joe could conceivably break both these records on paper yet that is the only place the claim will have any credence. The equalling of either of these records will be a mere statistical quirk. It would be quite analogous to Arsenal FC going a season unbeaten to win the (weakening Premier) Football League then failing to defend their league title successfully, they are a team who had a great season but never became a great team. Joe fought a great fight versus Lacy yet is very far away from being a great fighter.
I say this with trepidation as Barry McGuigan says Joe is arguably the greatest British fighter of all time. There is no argument; Joe is not at that level. McGuigan says “arguably”, I say it is not an argument, have some respect for real achievement instead of ITV spin Barry.
That is the crux here; boxing is becoming more and more about spinning than winning, or more appropriately winning against the best year in and year out, instead you put out the best spin as to why you have not fought them year in and year out. Joe has a single Lacy on his record and we are expected to fawn, he should have five or six Lacy-like fights on his record and the next one should be Mikkel Kessler.
Remember The Ring (or should I say rigged?) rankings? Well one of the criteria is that any Championship making fight should include the over-mythologized WBC title, according to this criteria Joe has been bumped back into position Number Two – a position he occupied whilst Ottke was active – by virtue of Mikkel Kessler’s thumping of Beyer on the night Joe was thumped fairly often by Bika. Kessler now has the WBA/WBC belts and is arguably at this moment the Number One Super-middleweight in the world.
So Joe must now take the name Hopkins from his mouth, Kessler is his legacy fight, a quadruple title dust-up, how great would it sound to hear Michael Buffer say that? Kessler is young and hungry and has chased Joe down. Joe cannot use the Get out of Fighting Sven card he has used in the past. Calzaghe cannot come out and effectively say: “I do not rate Kessler highly, I think I am better than him and would destroy him, therefore I will not fight him but I will still rank myself above him.”
Final Thought:
It pains me to say it but you have to laugh at Barry McGuigan these days. When judging Joe as Number One British fighter you must ask if he is even the best ever in his division. Benn and Eubank have comparable achievements. Even if you judge it on styles and head-to-head you have to pause for reflection – if only Barry would take this step before speaking – and engage a bit of imaginative thought.
It is Joe Calzaghe versus Nigel Benn or Chris Eubank (a prime Chris), after a tough first round Joe injures his hand. Would you still say he has the beating of these fighters? Or put another way; watch Calzaghe versus Evans Ashira or Bika, then imagine Benn or Eubank in the other corner.
