JOE CALZAGHE: "My wrist injury agony"

JOE CALZAGHE: My wrist injury agony 12:20pm Friday 25th July 2008 This has been an extremely difficult week for me. I would be lying if I said I haven’t felt depressed and angry to see my fight with Roy Jones Jr, scheduled for September 20 at Madison Square Garden, postponed due to injury. The most frustrating injuries are those that come out of the blue and that was certainly the case with this one. I haven’t really felt like speaking about the fight being off until today, because I have been really down about things. Those of you that have read my autobiography will know that sometimes I get frustrated when things are out of my control and injury has always been something that has affected me and caused me no end of worry. I guess the best thing to do is to recap exactly what happened to me this week and to explain where we go from here. I can say that the reports from the USA are entirely accurate, we expect to make the fight with Jones in November. I thought I had better get that out of the way! The injury happened on Monday, less than a week after I returned to full training at the Calzaghe gym in Newbridge. I had done all the physical training dad had set and we were working on the pads when I got hurt. I threw a right-hook at dad and instantly I knew it hadn’t landed as intended, I felt a jolt of pain in my wrist. So maybe we can blame dad! In the past I have been plagued with hand trouble, breaking bones in my left hand after facing Sakio Bika, Peter Manfredo and Bernard Hopkins. I also broke my left hand in training once, meaning I missed out on a huge Millennium Stadium fight with Glen Johnson, still to this day one of the biggest regrets of my career. So I guess the good news is that this time it is my right wrist, I can also reveal that I have broken no bones. As soon as I hurt the wrist I stopped training, we iced it up, but it’s impossible to know the extent of the damage until the next morning. Unfortunately when I woke up it was clear we did have a problem, my wrist was swollen and extremely painful. Dad knew I would have to pull out of the fight even before we saw a consultant, who conducted an MRI scan. The scan revealed a strain in the wrist tendon, but thankfully the outlook is quite good, I just need to rest it completely for a minimum of two weeks according to the consultant. It is a completely new injury and that is good news as far as I am concerned. My dad and trainer Enzo has been absolutely brilliant this week. He knew straight away I would have to pull out of the fight and made it clear to me I can’t beat Roy Jones with one hand and shouldn’t try. I want to be in wicked form by the time I face Jones, I want to knock him out and dad made it clear that I needed to make a quick decision to allow everyone in America to start planning for a new date. He also reminded me it’s a blessing that this injury has happened now and not in four weeks time when everyone will have booked tickets and hotels and could be very out of pocket. Obviously my phone hasn’t stopped ringing this week, but I would have found it hard to talk about things because I was so gutted, so I haven’t done much press and thankfully Jones stepped up to make it clear the fight was still on. So now I just have to wait, I am in pain but luckily the wrist is strapped up so I am still able to go jogging – the weather is perfect for it as well! The only other issue to clear up is that of which title belts the two of us will fight for come November. Jones said this week that he wants to weigh-in twice, firstly for my super middleweight titles and then for my Ring Magazine light heavyweight title. Basically, this won’t happen. The fight with Jones will be a light heavyweight – I am not busting to get down to 168lbs when I don’t need too. You can draw your own conclusions about what that means for me in 2009, the press guys certainly have been. But it is definitely not my intention to fight Jones with my super middleweight titles on the line. http://www.southwalesargus.co.uk/sport/columnists/joecalzaghe/3547059.JOE_CALZAGHE__My_wrist_injury_agony/ ........................................... LYING CUNT. DOES ANYONE ACTUALLY BELIEVE HE HAS A REAL INJURY? VOTE OR DIE!