By Lyle Fitzsimmons

NEW YORK – A three-year exile to boxing’s backwoods has officially ended.

Former four-division world champion Roy Jones Jr., whose career appeared finished after an abysmal three-fight losing skid in 2004-05, certified a return to relevance Tuesday with the press tour kick-off for his Nov. 8 match with Ring Magazine light heavyweight champion Joe Calzaghe.

The bout, originally scheduled for Sept. 20 before a Calzaghe wrist injury prompted postponement, is again set for Madison Square Garden and will be broadcast live on HBO PPV.

The tour continued in Los Angeles and includes future stops in London and Cardiff, Wales.

“I’m going to be looking right. I’m going to be in pretty good shape. I keep getting better, so however it goes, I’m going to be in the best shape I can,” Jones said.

Now 38, Jones held belts at middleweight, super middleweight, light heavyweight and heavyweight over a 10-year stretch before a precipitous fall from grace in the form of consecutive knockouts by Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson, and a uninspired effort in a subsequent decision loss to Tarver.

He fought twice in the two years following the losing streak – traveling to Idaho and Mississippi to out-point little-known fringe contenders Prince Badi Ajamu and Anthony Hanshaw – then returned to Manhattan for a widely-panned decision over ex-welterweight champ Felix Trinidad in January.

He began campaigning for a date with Calzaghe at the press conference immediately following the Trinidad win, claiming he’d fly to Wales the next morning to get the deal signed.

Calzaghe, meanwhile, has seen his star rise significantly since a lopsided win over St. Petersburg’s Jeff Lacy in a 2006 super middleweight unification bout many experts picked him to lose.

He followed up with successful 168-pound title defenses against Sakio Bika and Peter Manfredo Jr. and another unification with Mikkel Kessler before scoring his biggest win to date, a split 12-round decision over Bernard Hopkins in April to capture the Ring jewelry and consensus acclaim at 175.

The 36-year-old Welshman is unbeaten in 45 career fights, with 32 knockouts.

“I’m going to tell you the truth. I know this is going to be a wonderful fight,” Jones said. “Joe throws enough punches that he’s going to have us all tired. He’s going to start punching about 7 o’clock the night before, and he’s not going to stop until sometime Sunday.”

The two men were rumored close to meeting in 2001 but the fight never materialized, leaving Jones to claim in some interviews that Calzaghe was afraid to face him. Jones held the IBF title at 168 pounds between 1994 and 1996, defending it five times before moving to light heavyweight.

Calzaghe won the WBO crown at 168 in 1997 and defended it 21 times over 10 years before moving up to fight Hopkins in his first United States appearance.

“I followed his career from the amateur days, when he got robbed in the Olympics by the Korean, and I’ve always been a fan,” Calzaghe said.

“Roy is saying how pretty he looks all the time, and I’m not bad myself, and we’ll see who looks prettier after the fight. With Roy, I know he’s going to fight. He has tremendous hand speed like myself. It’s going to be a great fight.”

Jones, who’ll turn 39 in January, is 52-4 with 38 knockouts in 19 years as a pro.

“This is probably one of the bigger fights of my career. You never know a person for real until you do battle with him,” he said. “It took me 39 years to get this cute and this smart, so of course it’s going to effect me, but that’s about the only way. I try to stay in shape just in case somebody does say something or wants to dance.”