Calzaghe Still Has a Lot to Prove in Underachieving Career

There's something about Joe … I'd be lying if I told you that Joe Calzaghe had made a big impression on me early in his career. I was at ringside outdoors in Cardiff Arms Park, a ramshackle old rugby football ground in Wales, when Calzaghe made his professional debut with a first-round stoppage of Paul Hanlon in October 1993. But do I remember that fight? Not exactly. On that chilly evening my mind was full of Lennox Lewis defending his WBC heavyweight title against British icon Frank Bruno (as are my memories of the event today). "Joe who?" Not quite. I was aware of Calzaghe. I'd been at London's Royal Albert Hall months earlier when he'd won his third consecutive Amateur Boxing Association championship in a third weight division -- a feat that had been achieved only once before in over 100 years. I'd been told to look out for Calzaghe, that he was going to be something special. But my overriding memory is of a tall, rather flailing southpaw with a style that didn't appeal to me. You know what they say about first impressions? For me, something just didn't click from Day One, and my opinion of Calzaghe just hasn't really improved with time. Why? Well, there's his aforementioned boxing style -- way too much cuffing, slapping and incorrect punching for my liking. Being heavy-handed, as Calzaghe undoubtedly is, does not excuse this glaring flaw in his technique; speed and superficially flashy combinations appear to be prized more than proper delivery of punch. And then there are all those Calzaghe fights that have been postponed or cancelled due to injuries -- many having been sustained as a direct result of the aforementioned incorrect punching, I suggest. (Repeated fight cancellations get right up the nose of an editor of a monthly boxing magazine, who repeatedly has wasted his time giving space to previews of fights that don't take place.) Of course, there's also the way that the Welshman used to say that Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones were afraid to come to Wales and fight him, when the world and his mother knew that Calzaghe just wasn't a big enough fish to figure on their superstar radars at that time. But then it might be … I could go on (and on, really), because something about Joe Calzaghe just doesn't work for me. It never has. And maybe that's because the very bottom line is that I consider Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank, Calzaghe's predecessors as Brits to have won world super middleweight titles, to have been vastly superior champions, in the spirit of what I believe being a world champion is supposed to be about. In October 1992 I was there at ringside in Marino, Italy, when Benn tore the WBC belt away from Mauro Galvano in the most hostile circumstances. This after his having stopped Doug DeWitt and Iran Barkley on American soil in WBO middleweight title fights. Benn had a passport and he wasn't afraid to use it -- and I like a world champion who is also a world traveler. The only time that Calzaghe has ever defended on foreign soil is against Germany's Mario Veit, a fighter he had already knocked out in one round -- a big risk taken there. Veit is also the only rematch Calzaghe has ever taken part in. Some might say that's because Calzaghe's fights have never been close enough to warrant a rematch. There's some truth in that -- there's a lot of padding on Calzaghe's record and a few decent fighters were beaten out of sight -- but it's not completely accurate to say his undefeated slate has gone unchallenged. Former WBC champ Robin Reid (another who won his title against an Italian in Italy) beat Calzaghe on points in February 1992 according to one judge (by 116-111, while the other two judges that night voted for Calzaghe). For sure, it was Reid who priced himself out of a rematch, but not by a massive amount, I'd argue. Given the paucity of even moderately interesting opposition for Calzaghe, I would have expected the Welshman and his connections to chase a second Reid fight in order to clear up the one perceived blemish on his record. That, I would argue, is what a true champion would do. But no, because while Joe Calzaghe may have beaten Chris Eubank to become WBO champ, he is no Chris Eubank. The Brighton eccentric, for all his weird ways, was all champion. If someone gave Eubank a hard fight, he fought them again -- Benn, Michael Watson, Ray Close, Steve Collins … and often in the other guy's backyard. Yet Calzaghe somehow managed to go for years without fighting his one major championship rival, Germany's Sven Ottke, whose division record of 21 successful world title defenses Calzaghe will equal if he defeats Mikkel Kessler in Cardiff on Saturday night. It must be stated that Ottke's risk-reticent reign was even more laden with caution than the vast bulk of Calzaghe's championship tenure. Hell would more likely have frozen over before those two met voluntarily. But Eubank's conservatism ended with his monocle and his cane -- he was a fighter and a competitor. And the Calzaghe win which impressed me most was over Eubank for the vacant WBO title in October 1997. Some 18 months earlier, Calzaghe had ventured into hostile territory to face the unbeaten East London puncher Mark Delaney in Essex. Calzaghe successfully defended his British title via fifth-round stoppage and in doing so suggested to me that he did have something, despite others telling me that Delaney was exposed as all hype. But I sat stunned at ringside in Sheffield as Calzaghe dumped former champion Eubank on his backside in the opening round before going on to win a wide decision. I heard the voices of those who told me that the hugely more experienced Eubank was old and coming in at late notice, but this win, I thought, could be the start of something big for Calzaghe. As it transpired, the wait was interminable before the next time Calzaghe would make me sit bolt upright. And of course I was impressed by the masterful performance against Jeff Lacy in March 2006. But I wasn't the only one to note that Lacy, the IBF champion who walked into Manchester's MEN Arena holding his girlfriend's hand, bore little resemblance to the ferocious hooker with the Tyson-esque scowl that Britain had been expecting. Calzaghe was excellent in that fight, for sure, but over lunch some weeks earlier, promoter Frank Warren and his matchmaker, Dean Powell, had hinted to me that they considered Lacy to be made for Calzaghe. "Lacy's just Henry Wharton, isn't he," they stated in confident reference to the Yorkshire left hooker who had made Benn, Eubank and particularly Reid look like boxing masters in world title defenses. And there's the rub, for me. Too often, even in his best wins, Calzaghe has flattered to deceive and I have been left wanting more, rather like feeling hungry half an hour after a fast-food takeout. A convincing victory over Kessler this weekend would go some way toward improving my regard for Calzaghe, that's for sure. But I get the feeling that whatever Calzaghe achieves between now and the end of his retirement will be too little, too late for me to view him in a much more favorable light than I do today. I believe legacies are built over the course of whole careers, not just a few fights -- and that's where Calzaghe's claim to greatness falls down, in my opinion. He might well be a better fighter than either Nigel Benn or Chris Eubank were in their primes, but he has failed to prove it to my satisfaction. Were I a schoolmaster, at the end of each year of Calzaghe's career, I would have written the same remark: "Must try harder."