: Mon Nov 10, 2008 9:37 pm
I don't think Joe Calzaghe has anything left to prove to anybody and would fully understand his decision to retire, although from a purely selfish point of view I'd love him to continue a little while longer since he's still at the top of his game.
Some people will never give him the credit he deserves... he's beaten both Hopkins and Jones Jr but they were both "past it" (despite the fact Hopkins beat the next big thing Kelly Pavlik in his next fight), he's destroyed Jeff Lacy but he was "unproven" and he's beaten Mikkel Kessler but he was a "European nobody". I've heard all these things come out of people in America, at the end of the day if he beat Pavlik people would just say he wasn't that special anyway as Hopkins beat him and if he beat Chad Dawson people would say Dawson wasn't a truly world class fighter anyway... there's nothing left for him to do in terms of improving his reputation in my eyes, he can only damage it from here on in. The one fight I would like to see Calzaghe take is against Carl Froch but unfortunately that would never happen since the yanks wouldn't care enough about it.
And 'Juice' Terry, Roy Jones Jr came out and said that Calzaghe's "slaps" hurt a lot more than he thought they would. You see his face at the end of the fight?