Super-Middle Medley – What’s Ahead For Joe? – part one

By Suzanne Nield

In the first of a two-part feature, Suzanne Nield takes an in-depth look at what lies ahead for Joe Calzaghe as the Welshman enters the final stages of his career.

After that frustrating premature stoppage against Manfredo, the fans need something to look forward to. But they’re starting to feel nauseous as the endless carousel of possible challengers keeps spinning. We’ve been told a possible date and venue: July at the new Millenium Dome in Greenwich.

But who will be in the other corner against Calzaghe? And will it be another disappointment?

Number 1: Jermain Taylor

Could it happen?
Frank Warren recently confirmed that he wants to make the Jermain Taylor fight even if they have to wait until September to do it. Taylor is fighting Cory Spinks on 19 May so a July date would be out of the question. Sports Network offered $4 million to the WBC and WBO middleweight king, but in a recent interview Taylor said, ‘If Joe and Frank want me that much..make me an offer for $10 million and I will show up and bring him a gift to his front door.’ Taylor was non-committal about a fight with Joe, saying that he couldn’t look past Spinks. However, he also said that he would have no trouble putting weight on and would not be intimidated by a fight in front of Joe’s home crowd in Wales.

Do we want it to happen?
The 2000 Olympics bronze medallist, now at 26-0-1 with 17 kayos, really arrived when he upset future Hall of Famer Bernard Hopkins for the unified middleweight title in July 2005. However, he won by a split decision that should have been a draw. Everyone scored that last round for Hopkins except one of the three people who mattered – Judge Duane Ford. It wasn’t exactly an action-packed tear-up, and neither was their rematch 6 months later, when Taylor managed to do just enough accurate work to take a unanimous decision. All three judges saw it 115-113 this time. Then came the controversial draw with defence master Winky Wright, who stormed out of the ring in disgust after Taylor was given the benefit of the doubt in yet another fight where he was outlanded by his opponent according to CompuBox numbers.

Promoter Lou DiBella said, ‘My kid just went two fights in a row with Bernard Hopkins and then fought Winky Wright in a close fight. What does he have to do to get your respect?’ He has a point – Taylor has had quality opposition. But outside of his native Arkansas, Jermain is often regarded as unexciting and his record as deceptive. The too-wide decision over a physically smaller but terrifically active Ouma didn’t improve his image much.

This is a good match for Joe for the obvious reason – a big US audience for his talents. The weight issue won’t be an issue – Taylor is a big middleweight and has fought the bigger Hopkins. But Hopkins is getting on a bit.. and Joe, frankly, isn’t. Calzaghe keeps saying he doesn’t want to fight past forty like Bernard, but his recent matches have shown him to be as fast and vicious as ever. I think he’d do a tap dance on Taylor with superior strength and speed. Jermain has never encountered a thoroughly aggressive opponent with Calzaghe’s furious workrate, and I reckon he’d get the same shock the good-natured Jeff Lacy did.

Number 2: Mikkel Kessler

Could it happen?
This one’s looking more difficult, and Frank Warren’s come in for some flak about it. However, the cash offer to Danish promoter Mogens Palle included Scandinavian and German TV rights worth £3-£4 million, and Kessler has never had a better offer. What Warren balks at is Palle’s insistence on a 50-50 split and joint promotion.

Frank’s had experience of working in tandem with Palle back in the days of Joe Bugner – I’m guessing it must have been in ‘84 when Bugner fought Anders Eklund and Steffen Tangstad back to back in Denmark – and he called it ‘a nightmare’.

Sports Network were willing at one point to take the thin end of the wedge at 40-60 if a match with Hopkins could be made, but take the view that Kessler simply isn’t as valuable as Joe. You can see why – we’re talking about the difference between a champion who’s reigned for a decade and made twenty title defences, as opposed to one who’s been around since 2002 and defended his oldest belt, the WBC, five times.

WBC president Jose Sulaiman has gone on record this week to say that Kessler could beat Joe with one hand and that Calzaghe has fought nobodies. ‘Calzaghe’s been led in his career by defeating many second and third-rate fighters. He’s never really met a first-rate fighter,’ claimed Sulaiman.

The WBC President will be inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame this June in Canastota. The justification for this entirely escapes me, given that his organisation is purely concerned with the gathering of huge sanctioning fees. Its charity to boxers put one leading writer in mind of ‘a mobster buying a new boiler for the parish orphanage, just a way to deflect attention from the real business at hand’.

But let’s consider the issue rather than the personality. Has Joe played safe compared to Mikkel?

In his last ten fights, Joe’s opponents showed combined wins of 262 and combined losses of 17.
Compare the figures for Kessler: combined wins of 295, but combined losses of 36. Not a great deal of significance there if you ask me – the variation is to do with Kessler facing real veterans like Thobela, Craig Cummings and Lucas. Joe’s overall level of opposition during his career has been higher, most of his victims coming in fairly unsullied.

Just looking at the last couple of years, it’s quite hard to separate the two champions in terms of their activity. Mikkel went to Oz to tackle former rugby-player Mundine on his own turf, Joe knocked out mandatory Mario Veit (who was at 45-1 – that 1 loss also to Joe). Kessler knocked out respected former champ Eric Lucas, kayo-ed Markus Beyer for his WBC belt and returned an overwhelming decision over undefeated Mexican hotshot Librado Andrade last time out. Joe decisioned prospect Evans Ashira with a similar wide margin, destroyed world champ and former Olympian Jeff Lacy, and took a gruelling battle to the murderous Bika, not the cleanest fighter in the world.

However, we would certainly have expected to see bigger names than Bika or Manfredo after the Lacy performance
The worry is that Warren will drive too hard a bargain and potentially waste Joe’s career by failing to get those defining fights.

Do we want Calzaghe – Kessler to happen?
Hell, yes. Of course. Every self-respecting fight fan wants this one. No matter what great things life brings us, if it doesn’t come off we’ll lie on our deathbeds feeling just that little bit unfulfilled. Or maybe we’ll be clutching our grandchildren with withered hands asking, ‘Joe did beat Kessler, didn’t he?’ and they’ll have to humour us that it happened.

The Dane unified the WBC and WBA titles when he clonked Marcus Beyer in three rounds last October. A match up between Mikkel and Joe could at one point have unified the four major belts, as Joe has held the WBO since ooh before you were born, and ripped the IBF off the still-warm carcase of Jeff Lacy a year ago. Joe vacated the IBF, though, when he elected to face Manfredo rather than mandatory challenger Robert Stieglitz. (The belt has since been claimed by Colombian Alejandro Berrio, who walked all over Stieglitz in three rounds last month).

Nobody, but nobody, was happy with the Manfredo fight. We weren’t happy it was made, we weren’t happy it was stopped. No disrespect to Peter, who’s a better fighter than many gave him credit for. But we want it proven to the world that Joe is really a living legend, and that means putting him in with someone of undisputed quality.

We want Kessler, who at 39-0 with 29 on the inside is the closest thing to a fair match for Joe we can think of.
During the Lacy massacre, the American Showtime commentators called Joe a ‘machine’.

Well, Kessler’s a machine, too. But they’re different machines. Mikkel is the kind of precision instrument the northern Europeans make well – reliable, sturdy and safe. He’s like a big, blue-eyed Volkswagen – you could pack the kids in him and take them on a day trip, secure in the knowledge that his transmission won’t let you down. Watching him fight gives you a kind of secure feeling, to know that the world is a civilised place that has produced a calm, assured athlete who is so well-trained you can just wind him up and let him go, to do his reliable stuff.

On the other hand, Joe is like one of those industrial woodchippers people use to dispose of bodies in nasty movies. You keep him in a shed with a padlock and don’t let the family pet play nearby.

Kessler gets quite enthused sometimes in a happy Viking way when he scores a knockdown. But he’s got nothing like the murderous Celt’s killer instinct. Beyer went down from a single meaty right to the chin that was a bit surprising in a slow-paced fight – if he’d been in with Joe, he’d have been spread all over the ring in round 1. Same goes for Eric Lucas – despite their records, both of those guys were one-dimensional fighters, and it would’ve taken Calzaghe less time to expose them. Even Mundine, a terrific athlete, wouldn’t be capable of matching the Welshman’s speed and would have felt the twist inside the distance.

Joe told the Sun recently, ‘Kessler is a carbon copy of Lacy. When I got injured and pulled out of the first date against Lacy people called me chicken. Then I destroyed him only for people to say he was never any good anyway. If I have to fight Kessler to unify the division I will. Just because he beat some average Mexican called Librado Andrade doesn’t make him a great fighter.’

Don’t miss part two of Suzanne’s feature on Monday.