No Ordinary Joe

I knew I wasn’t performing and, emotionally, this was hurting me because I’ve always felt good about doing what I do. I find it strange sometimes but I know I make a difference in people’s lives and that’s uplifting, especially when I’m training. Sometimes when I’m home and I don’t have a fight to look forward to I get depressed, because climbing into the ring and standing under those shining lights, surrounded by thousands of people who are about to experience a unique kind of thrill, is the most exciting, daunting, frightening and beautiful feeling. This is who I am and people look up to me and respect me for it. But if I didn’t box, what would I be? If something had to give, it wasn’t going to be boxing.

At that time I lived almost next door to Oakdale Pitch & Putt and I used to spend a lot of spare time there, almost every day. Whatever the weather, I would head out with my dad, even if there was water flooding the greens. I’m no Tiger Woods but I played the course so regularly that I was sure I had mastered it. One day I went round in two over par. I missed a hole-in-one by an inch after hitting a perfect wedge shot. The next day, of course, I was twenty over and back to being a hacker. I can’t remember why but we stopped playing for about a month and my elbow started to get better. The problem might have stemmed from the chronic injury in my right wrist and swinging the club probably triggered it off, I don’t know, but I was happy to give up, if it meant that my elbow would be pain-free. It was purely by chance that I had stopped going out to play golf and the elbow got better. Who would have thought that a game of golf could be so dangerous for your health?

I had not sparred for over a year at this point but I said to Frank that I wanted to carry on and I would fight Sheika, if the date was pushed back. So he set a new date of 12 August at Wembley Conference Centre and persuaded me to come to training camp in Cheshunt in Hertfordshire to get some good sparring in. Frank knew that I was much better than I’d been showing and he wanted to make sure that I was right, that I would have the best possible chance of producing the kind of performance I hadn’t been able to, for a variety of reasons, since the Eubank fight. I spent two weeks in Cheshunt, the only time I’ve gone away to train in my pro career, and I was absolutely woeful. My timing was way out, my movement wasn’t good, I was lazy because I hadn’t sparred for ages and I was getting caught. My confidence was shot and it was all just dreadful. I was so out of practice in terms of sparring that I’d loaned my Reyes protector, which gives protection on the sides, to one of my mates, and had to wear one that didn’t have any padding on its sides. After one session one of my kidneys was killing me and the next day I had a big, black bruise on my side where I’d been punched just below the belt. For two weeks I sparred, Monday to Friday, home at the weekend, back to sparring Monday to Friday again. Then around the middle of the second week I began to show some signs of improvement. I was timing my shots better and seeing the punches coming, so I was slipping them. My balance, which had been the most awful aspect of my performance against Starie, wasn’t quite perfect but I was getting there. I was feeling more confident in myself and, most importantly, my elbow wasn’t troubling me at all. I had started learning how to fight properly again and the transformation in my boxing almost made me a new man. My enthusiasm was back and I began to really look forward to the fight.

This was one of the most important bouts of my career, just behind Lacy and Eubank. I had reached a crossroads and a bad performance could have sent me off in the wrong direction. Frank was describing me as his fighter for the new millennium and great things were going to happen, but in my last two appearances I had been flat. I needed to impress again and Sheika was a dangerous boxer. He was one of the fighters I was a bit worried about and I knew that I wouldn’t get away with it, if I boxed as badly as I did against Reid, Thornberry and Starie. He had lost an eight-round decision against my former sparring partner, Tony Booth, in Sheffield, but Booth had used his experience to make it a mauling match and Sheika was better than that. He could punch, having stopped thirteen opponents in his twenty wins, and that got me psyched up. Particularly in America, a lot of fight people fancied him to win. He had a big mouth and slagged me off whenever he could, even predicted that he was going to kill me, which is a phrase I hate to hear in boxing but it’s a typically American thing to say. One of the guys in his entourage repeated it: ‘We’re going to kill Calzaghe.’ You’re going to kill? The thought just chills and I don’t know how someone can say that going into a boxing match.

I’ve never had an entourage and whenever I go to a press conference or weigh-in it’s usually only me and my dad, but Sheika turned up with about a dozen guys, who mouthed off just like him and we were all staying in the same hotel. I didn’t fancy walking in for dinner and having to listen to their crap, so I moved to another hotel and left my PlayStation and games in a taxi and wasn’t in the best of moods even before Sheika put his fist through a big poster of me during a public workout and repeated his bad-ass nonsense. If his intention was to make me as focused and determined as I possibly could be, which I doubt, he was going about it in just the right way. Another guy who annoyed me in that final week was Toks Owoh, a London fighter who’d been working with me and was putting it about that he’d wobbled me in sparring. Even though he had been stopped in four rounds by Sheika in 1998 he told anybody who would listen that he could take me. Everywhere I turned he was there, then at the weigh-in Sheika went eyeball to eyeball with me and all I heard were the people in his entourage yelling out, ‘He’s scared. He’s scared.’ Now I’m no psychologist, nor have I ever worked with one, but if I had I don’t see how they could have done a better job for me than this group of comedians ahead of the fight.

Many believe that the enthralling contest against Chris Eubank in Sheffield in October 1997 was the last time that Calzaghe was at his best. Injury has not helped his cause and although he remains unbeaten, with 23 knockouts from his 28 professional bouts, he has looked far from a champion in his past three contests and is running out of time if he is to convince the American public that he is of genuine world class. Sheika, from New Jersey, is managed and trained by Bill Cayton and Steve Lott, two former mentors of Mike Tyson. He has enhanced his credibility in the United States and Calzaghe has made only five title defences since the Eubank meeting because of hand and elbow problems. His points win over David Starie on the Tyson-Julius Francis undercard in Manchester in January was particularly unimpressive. Calzaghe is pleased that Sheika arrives intent on victory rather than survival, as his recent opponents have appeared to be. Sheika, on the other hand, is pleased that Calzaghe is fully fit so that there will be no excuses if he should lose. ‘Neither fighter is going to give in, that’s what I like about this fight,’ Lott said. ‘It’s the old expression – both fighters have bad intentions.’ Lott, who is sanguine about his 23-year-old charge, said, ‘He’s grown but he’s still a baby in boxing. A fighter like Joe Calzaghe has a tremendous advantage in experience.’ Calzaghe’s task is to make that experience count.

I like to be on my own in the hours before a fight or just with my dad, in order to clear my mind. On the afternoon of the Sheika fight I went to the nearby shopping centre and had a meal by myself, then walked around Wembley Stadium and imagined what might have been. When my career is over I’d like to play Sunday league football, if there’s a team on the lookout for a slow, dogged ex-bruiser at that stage. I met up with Dad and we went into a bookies to have a little bet on the horses. It was the hottest day of the year, it was beautiful and my mind couldn’t have been in a better place as I walked back to the hotel and prepared to leave for the arena. The theme tune from Mission: Impossible was turned up high as I walked to the ring, just to make sure that Sheika would hear it, but he was still busy yapping. ‘Come in here,’ he shouted at me. ‘You’re going down.’ A big guy in his corner yelled across the ring, ‘This is not your night, Calzaghe.’ All week Sheika just didn’t learn, so the only option left to me was to hammer home the lesson. His whole bullshit just made me want to smash him, which is precisely what I did.

I was bigger and stronger than him and made myself the boss in the opening round. I outjabbed him, outboxed him and outpunched him, and manhandled him completely. My timing was spot on and I did a number on him. There are probably just a handful of fights that I was completely in the zone for: Eubank, Mitchell, Brewer, Lacy and this one. In all those fights I had to perform at or near to my best and I did, Sheika provoking one of my best performances. Something seems to just click in my mind when the challenge is at its greatest and I know I’ve got to produce the goods at that moment. Sheika looked for big power punches from the opening bell but I outworked him. It wasn’t power that beat him. My arms just moved too fast for him, he was confused and couldn’t find a way to respond. He started to complain to the referee about being hit on the back of the head and there were head clashes as well but I was clubbing him on the side of the head, a legitimate punch, and he was the one who wanted to clinch. A lot of fighters neglect to punch on the inside but that shot to the side of the head hurts and I stung Sheika a lot with it. Ernie Fossie, who worked the corner with my dad in all of my fights after I signed with Frank until sadly he passed away in 2004, told me I was boxing beautifully. He always had a nice way with words to reinforce your confidence and I had a lot of respect for Ernie. Dad was urging me to finish the job, for in the fourth round Sheika began to cut up around his eyes, so I didn’t let up until the referee stepped in towards the end of the fifth round. I dropped to my hands and knees because the win meant so much to me. It wasn’t just that I had beaten Sheika. I was back.

As an exercise in image refurbishment, Joe Calzaghe’s sixth successful defence of his WBO super middleweight title was in Premier League class. The 28-year-old Welshman, whose career had sailed into stormy waters, performed a brilliant rescue operation, stopping challenger Omar Sheika after 2min 8sec of the fifth round at the Conference Centre here last night. While it lasted it was something of a blood-and-thunder classic, which deserved a greater audience than the 1,500 or so who only half-filled the arena. It was an example of how two well-matched young men can produce a blend of boxing that is both exciting and of high quality. In the end Calzaghe, much sharper and definitely more positive than in his recently disappointing outings, had too much armoury for the 23-year-old Sheika, from Paterson, New Jersey, who was thought to be the first Palestinian Arab to challenge for a world title. When the bout was ended by the Chicago referee, Genaro Rodriguez, Sheika’s features were stained with the blood of battle leaking from cuts around both eyes. The one over his left was by far the worst, the top of his eyelid almost sliced open. But damage had also been done to his other eye towards the end of the fourth round. It was announced that the referee had stepped in because of the cuts but it was confirmed afterwards that he halted it because the brave Sheika was shipping too much punishment. A fearsome flurry had him reeling, and the referee’s action, despite Sheika’s angry protests, merely curtailed what would have been a more painful conclusion.

I felt like I’d won the world title again, it was such a satisfying victory, particularly in the style I achieved it. ‘What is happening to me?’ I’d asked myself for so long. I’d beaten Eubank, a great fighter, then I made two decent defences, but I was embarrassed by my performance against Starie, and similarly angry by the way I fought against Reid. After every fight I look for the errors I’ve made, more than I look for what I did well, and the more I look the more errors I see and it does my head in. ‘Who is that? That’s not me,’ I’ll say. I know there is no such thing as the perfect fighter but there are so many aspects of my boxing I can make better and I want to make better. I don’t delude myself that physically I can get better but, even at thirty-five years old, I know I can improve.

One weakness I had as a southpaw boxer, leading with my right hand, was that I got caught by far too many straight right-hand punches from orthodox opponents, who lead with their left. I just couldn’t find a way to prevent guys with basic skills from crossing their right and nailing me. Reid was able to do it all night long in Newcastle. Boxing is like geometry, measuring angles and space and calculating where to position yourself so that you can strike your opponent and make him miss. The hitting zone is narrow but by rotating forty-five degrees to your right or left you can create a new target area for your punches while making it difficult for your opponent to retaliate. I worked out that I moved to my left more than I should and into the space where the right hands were coming. Being a southpaw, I ought to move more to my right to be able to counter across my opponent’s jab. I was a complete sucker against Reid because my left hand was broken in the sixth round and I couldn’t use it, yet I kept moving in a direction that narrowed the target area for my right hand and opened up opportunities for his. The right hand is the punch to throw against a southpaw and I’ve become savvier to this the longer I’ve gone in my career.

My movement on the inside developed more quickly, the slight turning of the head to slip a punch and the knowledge of those angles in close where you’re vulnerable to hooks and uppercuts. People have always regarded my so-called arm punches as a weakness, ineffective, and Jeff Lacy even described them as slaps, but he was the classic example of how much these rapid-fire bursts of punches can do damage. I pick a point at which to fire three or four rapid-fire shots, bah-bah-bah-bah, and these baffle opponents, then boom, I hit the guy with a harder punch, a big one. It’s unexpected because I haven’t given him time to think or any warning that it’s coming. I’m so busy for a super middleweight and I’m always on top of my opponent, crowding him, probing him, making him commit and luring him into making mistakes. If I stood back and threw only forty punches in a round, my opponent could think up all kinds of plans of attack but I let the punches go and I mix them up, jabs, hooks, uppercuts, crosses, so it’s hard for my opponent to think when he has all of this going on around his head. He can’t figure out what’s happening. This was Lacy’s problem, he had no time to set himself to throw his big, powerful hooks. I shocked him with my movement and he couldn’t believe that I could outwork him on the inside. That was his turf, the place where he thought he’d be able to just rip into me and rip me apart because he was the puncher, but my movement was superior and so was my hand speed. I completely bamboozled him and fucked up his mind. He kept trying to land his big left hook but all of a sudden, bah-bah-bah-bah-bah-bah, I’d hit him with half a dozen punches, a dozen, and he could get nothing off in reply. This is what did his head in and it was the same with Sheika.

Not every punch I threw against Sheika was quality and a lot of them weren’t pretty, but they confused him and this is what makes me different to other fighters. My style is unique in the way that I mix up my punches between speed shots and hurtful blows, tapping him to look for an opening and then banging in a big one. I’ve learnt over the years that the best defence is a good offence. It’s always good to throw a punch, any kind of punch, to make the opponent think that he has to come through a minefield before he can even come close to landing a blow. Sheika couldn’t do it because of my hand speed which, I believe, is my greatest asset. Even when I haven’t been in the gym for a while and I come back weighing fourteen stone, my hands will still be unbelievably quick. My legs get tired but I have natural speed in my arms and I can stand and punch all day. I don’t have a long reach for a super middleweight, just 73in. Lacy’s a stocky guy and shorter than me, but his reach was 74in and Reid’s 76in. Their arms, therefore, had further to travel to reach the target but mine are shorter and quicker because they don’t have as far to come back. Maybe this is the magic formula.

Whatever it is, I am fascinated by the science of boxing. I get very analytical when I sit down after a fight, yet in the ring everything I do is spontaneous. It just happens naturally. Most fighters have to think about what they’re doing when they’re in there and they follow a certain plan in their head. I never go into a fight with a set plan, which means that I’m constantly alert, alive to the possibilities and ready to react. When I see an opening I go for it instinctively, I don’t think about it first. I like to dictate the pace and hold the centre of the ring, make my opponent move and throw him off his game. You rarely see me on the ropes but none of this is part of a predetermined plan. When I’m at my best and most fluent I’m totally focused on the moment. It doesn’t matter how fit you are, you could be in the best shape of your life, but if your mind’s not on the job you’re going to get caught. In this business it takes a split second and it could all be over. It’s the finest of fine edges, so the only thing I always make sure I do is to concentrate and stay in the zone. Sometimes I haven’t been there and I’ve lowered myself to my opponent’s level and this is dangerous because any fighter can get caught. So I’m trying to get better all the time and I never feel totally invincible. Every day I’m champion there is somebody somewhere after what I’ve got.

Roy Jones was the top pound-for-pound fighter in the world and a former champion at middleweight and super middleweight, but he was already the WBC light heavy-weight champion when I beat Eubank. So when people ask why I never fought him it’s important to remember that we never actually boxed in the same division. I’ve considered moving up to light heavyweight for many years and a deal was agreed for a title challenge against Jamaica’s Glen Johnson at 12st 7lb in July 2006, but a recurrence of the injury to my left hand meant that I had to pull out of the Millennium Stadium show. By this stage Jones had been knocked out by Johnson and Antonio Tarver and, although he’s still active, I would never want to fight him now. He’s not the same fighter and I’d have nothing to gain by beating a shadow of what he once was. Jones was a great fighter in his day and a great name, but he’s been knocked out twice, knocked out cold. What would I have to gain by knocking him out for a third time?

When Jones was in his heyday, that’s when I wanted the fight. He was brilliant, head and shoulders above any of his challengers at the time, and he’s the one fighter I’d ever have been really worried about. Jones at his best would have been the toughest. He dominated at middle-weight and super middleweight and stepped up to light heavy to win all the belts. I loved watching him perform, I was one of his biggest fans, but you have to question why his performance level completely dipped from the moment it transpired a few years ago that he had failed a drugs test in a fight in Indiana against another American, Richard Hall. All of a sudden he fell from the Premiership to League Two, from being absolutely peerless to distinctly average. Was it age or coincidence? All I know is that after it became known that he had failed a drugs test in 2000 he was never the same fighter. Jones was like Superman when he was younger, the way he moved and the way he boxed, but suddenly he became mortal. When he fought Antonio Tarver for the light heavyweight title twice and lost twice he was rubbish. If I had fought Jones at his peak and got beaten, I would feel swindled today, knowing that he had taken steroids. It’s cheating, there’s no other word for it, and I don’t know how it managed to be swept under the carpet for a number of years and he went totally unpunished. In athletics drugs cheats get banned automatically for two years, and if steroids can make athletes run faster, they can surely help a boxer to hit harder and to hit quicker and to hit for longer and this will enable him to inflict more punishment, which I think is repulsive. During our pre-fight medicals we get tested for drugs and it’s never crossed my mind to take anything performance-enhancing. I don’t have a big pot of pills that I dip into all hours of the day. In fact, I have a job just to remind myself to take my vitamins.

I would be angry if someone I fought took something that gave him an unfair advantage because this is a dangerous sport, it’s not like running. In athletics it now seems almost part of the culture, just like cycling, and the whole idea is to stay one step ahead of the testing. I sat alongside Justin Gatlin, at the time the reigning Olympic 100m champion, on the BBC’s Question of Sport about a year ago and spoke to him afterwards. We talked about the Jeff Lacy fight because he’s from Florida as well and he seemed like a really nice guy and I was genuinely shocked and disappointed when he failed a drugs test last summer. Whenever I watch athletics or cycling now I have my suspicions. Some get caught and some don’t but I like to think that fighters are clean. Boxing’s a warrior sport and, to me, there have always been values that go along with that. If I were ever to appear in the ring with huge muscles, boxing as a cruiserweight or a heavyweight, you could assume that I hadn’t built myself up on protein shakes alone, so I’d never do it.

A possible fight with Jones was being mooted when I had one of my most difficult experiences facing Richie Woodhall, for Richie was and still is a friend and it was tough to fight him at all. I first met him at Crystal Palace when we were amateurs training with the Great Britain squad and we were both managed and promoted by Mickey Duff, so I boxed on several of his undercards on the way up. Richie is a genuinely good guy and so is his dad, Len, who gets on very well with my dad. When Frank put an offer to me to defend my title against him I wasn’t sure. I had to think about it because he was a mate, but in the end I thought it was right to give him the opportunity to fight for the title. The dilemma for me was being uncertain how I would react to stepping into the ring against a guy I really liked. Richie’s a family man who has kids the same age as mine and at the final head-to-head press conference we asked after our families and didn’t do a head-to-head pose out of respect. It was weird. I respected Richie as a fighter too. He got beaten by Markus Beyer, the German, on a bad night when he lost his WBC super middleweight title but I knew he could box and I knew he’d be up for the fight and he’d perform because this was his last opportunity.

Richie boxed really well but I lacked something essential in that fight. He was stung by a right hand to the temple in the opening round and if it had been any other opponent, I would have charged him. I wanted to win but I didn’t have the same anger or fire in the belly. But Richie was really in the fight and caught me with a lot of shots. I was winning but it was competitive. Technically, Richie was an excellent boxer and he started to land cheeky right hands and enjoyed a couple of good rounds. Finally, in the eighth round, he caught me with some really decent punches and I fired back. Being a fighter is all about going against logic, going against the natural human instinct to run away from the fire. I was really maddened, so I gritted my teeth, hit myself on the chin with one of my gloves and shouted at him, ‘Come on.’ In my head he had crossed the line and our friendship, just for that moment, was put to one side. I could see him going back and starting to wane, so I really started to throw solid punches and he kind of became resigned to his fate. I could see by the look on his face that he didn’t have much left. He came in to hold, so I used what I call busy punches, flurries of punches, because I knew it was almost over. I dropped Richie in the ninth round, used my speed to finish him and the referee stepped in. I didn’t want to knock him out and I was glad when the referee stopped it. He had fought a really good fight and caught me with a lot of shots but Richie wasn’t a big puncher. He’s the one opponent, however, that I really felt bad for after I beat him. It was only when the fight was over that we discovered what had happened to Paul Ingle just before we got in the ring and I’m glad that I didn’t know.

The 28-year-old Welshman’s 10th-round stoppage victory over Telford’s Richie Woodhall, in a match between present and former champions, was outstanding. The two friends had produced a memorable contest to raise the spirits of a crowd that had only minutes before been stunned to see Ingle carried out on a stretcher, and had been unaware of the full extent of the Yorkshireman’s injuries . . . Calzaghe seemed deeply moved despite being denied what would have been rightful acclaim for a memorable win had it not been for the injury sustained by Ingle. Woodhall, 32, a former holder of the WBC version of the title, made nonsense of the bookies who rated him as little more than a no-hope bit-part actor in a script suggesting Calzaghe would comfortably notch up a seventh defence of his WBO title. For round after round, the two stood toe to toe giving a wonderful display of commitment and no little skill, and Woodhall’s impressive combinations raised genuine hopes among his supporters that he would be capable of springing a significant upset. But the end, in the 10th, was a minor refereeing masterpiece by Roy Francis, in charge of his last world-title fight before enforced retirement at the age of 65. Woodhall was shipping heavy punches and had become an open target when Francis mercifully made a perfectly timed intervention. On numerous occasions the two friends touched gloves to show appreciation of their opponent and smiled and hugged when the fight was over. On a grim night, it was a much-needed tonic which gave hope to those who had paid to watch.

Lennox Lewis and Naseem Hamed were regarded as the two best fighters in the world in their different weight divisions at the beginning of 2001 but in the space of two weeks in April they both suffered crushing defeats, Naz by Marco Antonio Barrera and Lewis by Hasim Rahman, a devastating fifth-round knockout in South Africa. Just a week after Lewis lost the world heavyweight title I faced my mandatory challenger, Mario Veit, determined to stop the rot. The twenty-seven-year-old German had been at ringside to watch my fight against Sheika and, knowing he would be my next opponent, I looked into his face and he didn’t seem to be too reassured by what he had witnessed. But the atmosphere at Wembley was a world away from the electrical current created by six thousand people inside Cardiff’s International Arena when Veit stepped in the ring and his worry had turned to pure, naked fear. I could sense it when we came together for the referee’s instructions and he refused to make eye contact. His anxiety betrayed him and this was the signal for me that he was there for the taking.

Veit was undefeated in thirty fights and a dangerous fighter but he was in the lion’s den and he froze. The occasion simply got to him because he’d never boxed before in this type of situation. Usually, I’m aggressive but a touch cautious in the opening round and like to show a lot of feints, just to size up my opponent, so I stand there with a wide stance and weigh things up quickly. My dad always says that I do this in about thirty seconds. A boxer can totally wipe out his opponent by feinting him, just like Sugar Ray Leonard did to Roberto Duran in their rematch. I have a tendency to become too embroiled in a toe-to-toe fight because when I’m in that ring I never have any fear. I’m an aggressive, attacking counter-puncher, always dangerous and always in perfect range to punch. I could see that he was going to need time to get into the fight, so I made up my mind that I would jump on him, attack his body, bring his arms down, then I would hit him on the chin and knock him out. I’ve never been as sure of anything as I was that I’d get through this guy in a single round.

He was tall, six foot four inches, a very upright boxer but this style didn’t help him when he lost his nerve. I like fighting tall guys, getting in underneath them and firing in punches over the top, but Veit was tense as well, absolutely rigid, so I jumped on him, drove some hard left hooks into his body and his hands came down very quickly. He was heavy-legged and tried to hold on but I threw a left uppercut, a beautiful punch, and he was down within the opening thirty seconds. He’d never been down before and he was absolutely gone. It wasn’t long before I had him down again from a left hook to the jaw and, clearly now, he wasn’t going to last. I followed straight in with a swarm of unanswered punches until the referee, Mark Nelson, stopped the fight.

I was now established as the top fighter in Britain and I wanted to take on the biggest names, like Jones, Bernard Hopkins, and any other top Americans. Showtime TV was showing my fights again in the United States so I was offered another appearance on a Mike Tyson undercard. We tried to get one of the big names but, eventually, had to settle on Will McIntyre from Louisiana who was very limited and, quite obviously, a middleweight stepping up. Every morning I came down to the hotel restaurant for breakfast, to drink only mineral water with ice because of making weight, and I’d see him already at the table eating a good, hearty breakfast and couldn’t quite believe it. Just for that, I wanted to knock him out and I dropped him at the end of the third round – the first time in his career that he’d been put down – and waved to the referee to stop it. He didn’t, even though McIntyre’s legs were gone, but he’d seen enough and stopped it early in the fourth.

Tyson was due in the ring soon after and would knock out Brian Nielsen, the local heavyweight, but as I was settling down into my seat ahead of the main event, Shelley Finkel, Tyson’s manager, came over and sat beside me. A newspaper had quoted me referring to Tyson as a bit of a lunatic and Mike had read the piece, Shelley wished to warn me. He wasn’t amused. So at the press conference afterwards, I sat very close to Dad and kept myself hidden away as best I could. Knowing what Tyson can be like, I didn’t fancy almost sixteen stone of him against twelve stone of me. I managed to steal away without him noticing. Lennox Lewis was lined up to fight him next and was much better equipped than me to put Iron Mike in his place, which he duly did.

I’ve always been closer to my dad’s side of the family. His brothers, Sergio and Uccio, who is my godfather, were more like pals, brothers even. Uccio was an athlete himself, placing third in a national skills competition at Naples football stadium when he was younger. But two weeks before I boxed Charles Brewer he nearly died. I came in to my old boxing gym one day and got a cold feeling the minute I looked at my dad. He was on the phone and I knew straight away that something was wrong. Uccio had been in a car crash, his car flying across the road and finishing halfway up the bank on the side. He did manage to scramble out but the car collapsed on him and he suffered some horrendous injuries, a broken back, a collapsed lung, a broken arm and two broken legs. He was in a really bad way and it was touch and go for a period of time. I was devastated and I really didn’t know going into the fight if he was going to pull through. It took him a month before he was able to leave the hospital but he’s a fighter too, a strong farmer and me dedicating the Brewer fight to him gave him that extra incentive to get better.

Charles Brewer lived up to this image when I returned to the International Arena twelve months later and I was made to realise why they called him ‘The Hatchet’. Brewer was one of the hardest punchers I’ve ever fought and certainly one of the most rugged. He still carried a .22 calibre bullet in his chest after being shot in a brawl in north Philadelphia sixteen years earlier, so he couldn’t have been anything other than tough.

Brewer was the International Boxing Federation (IBF) title-holder when I won the WBO belt from Eubank and had stopped Herol Graham, one of Britain’s best middleweight boxers over the years, in ten rounds in 1998, but not before being floored twice himself. Sven Ottke of Germany beat him later that year in a controversial points decision, one of many that Ottke would come through in his five-year title reign. It’s an interesting fact that in the nine years between my bouts with Eubank and Lacy the other titles in the super middleweight division changed hands among nineteen different fighters. Glen Catley, the Bristol boxer I beat twice in the amateurs, even won the WBC belt for a brief spell. Brewer is one of six fighters I’ve fought who held versions of the title, so there can be no doubt that in the last decade I’ve proved myself to be the best fighter in my division. From the tapes I’d seen of Brewer, I reckoned that he was chinny, for he’d been stopped three times in forty-five fights. As a middleweight, he got knocked out twice back to back, but he’d got his career going again and I could see his confidence when I went over to New York for a press conference with the American media. Fighters know, we can see it in each other’s eyes, and I knew that Brewer would handle the intimidating atmosphere much better than Veit had.

In the opening thirty seconds he caught me with a hard left to the body, which slightly winded me. I didn’t realise that he was a converted southpaw – a left-handed fighter, like myself – but he fought out of an orthodox stance, so he was able to land his left with real power. Body shots, in any case, are often harder to get over than punches to the chin because a good dig to the solar plexus will stay with you for a while. You can do as many sit-ups as you want but, if you’re hit in the right area, you can’t protect the vulnerable area of the solar plexus. There’s no meat on your ribs and, if you’re caught there, it stings for a while. There wasn’t much in Brewer’s right hand but his left jab and left uppercut were seriously hard shots. I fought the wrong fight, for I should have boxed him, but once again I got drawn into the kind of slugging match that I can rarely resist if my opponent is up for it. I stayed in there and traded punches with him and that’s the way the fight progressed until he stunned me near the end of the seventh round when I walked into his left hand after being caught by a couple of jabs. Doubling the uppercut, he hit me flush on the jaw and when the bell rang I came back to the corner where I was assaulted almost as forcefully by my dad.

When Dad starts to get really animated I know I need to shift up a gear and from the start of the eighth round I moved and boxed for the rest of the fight and Brewer had no answer. So many times I fight the wrong fight, and that’s what happened after the hard body shot he landed early. When I boxed him I made it easy for myself because he couldn’t touch me. He was very heavy-legged, so he needed me to engage him, but I was too clever for that over the final rounds. I moved well to avoid his punches and won the fight comfortably.

If his successful 10th defence of his title against Charles Brewer of the United States proved anything, it is that Calzaghe seems to have embarked on a mission to set new personal standards. Brewer, unrecognisable from the boxer who struggled to overcome Herol Graham almost four years ago, revived the legend of the tough Philadelphian but after 36 minutes of unrelenting assault and battery, the judges were left in no doubt of the outcome. That the triumvirate scored it 117–112, 118–111 and 119–109 for the Welshman was merely affirmation of a performance that must rank with the finest from a British boxer for many years.

Another Philadelphian was now in my sights, Bernard Hopkins, an excellent boxer who has proved himself over many years to be one of the best of his era. I respect him because he’s been tremendously successful and he came up the hard way, struggling to get his dues until late in his career when he beat Felix Trinidad and Oscar De La Hoya and unified the middleweight division. He completed a record twenty successful title defences before dropping two decisions against fellow American Jermain Taylor in 2005, then moved up to light heavyweight to win a second world title against Antonio Tarver. He’s not the kind of opponent I usually like to fight, as he’s a defensive-minded boxer, very cagey, and I’ve struggled against these types many times in the past. Although Hopkins is technically very good, Roy Jones was a much more exciting fighter to watch because he had fast hands and always showed more flair. I believe I would beat Hopkins but I don’t know if the gel would make for a good fight. We may still find out because Hopkins is not yet retired and I’d love to do the fight. Back in 2002 a deal was agreed and we looked all set to fight at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, then he walked away, which seems to be the story for me and big fights.

A teleconference was set up in my office in New York for July 30th, 2002, and on the call was myself, Don King who was in the room, Frank Warren and Bernard Hopkins’ lawyer, Arnold Joseph. Along with Arnold was a woman named Linda Carter, who was there on behalf of Bernard. We asked Arnold if Bernard wanted to fight Joe Calzaghe and we asked him how much money he would want if he did. The response we got was $3 million and the fight would have to take place in the United States. After a little scratching of the head, we said, ‘Okay, done.’ Frank Warren agreed on the spot, Don King agreed and we agreed, so as far as we were concerned all the parties were singing off the one hymn sheet. Arnold excused himself with Linda and I can only assume it was to call Bernard. Either that day or the next day, I’m just not certain about that particular timeframe, they came with a new demand: $6 million, double the sum that had been agreed. In addition to the Calzaghe fight, we had offered him $1 million to fight Morrade Hakkar, and the winner of that bout to fight Harry Simon. Then he would have had the bout with Joe but when he came back asking for $6 million, the deal blew up. I thought that the Hopkins fight was a spectacular prospect, but it wasn’t to be. Bernard’s pretty shrewd, he’s no dummy and has done a wonderful job of self-management in his career, but he had then and still has no desire to fight Joe Calzaghe, that much is pretty clear. Joe gets criticised sometimes for not having fought more big-name Americans, but in this case the fault has never rested with him.

Miguel Jimenez became my next opponent instead but it was another of those fights which I couldn’t really get up for. Only the venue was spectacular, open air in the August sunshine at Cardiff Castle, though the atmosphere was like a country fair because all the crowd noise just escaped into the sky, but my focus wasn’t there. I knew that Jimenez was a league beneath me and I just wasn’t worried about him enough to be on my game. You always need to have a little fear of your opponent to be at your best, you have to be concerned about him. I had only two or three weeks’ notice that I would be boxing him and I didn’t really perform and damaged my left hand again, which came up really badly swollen. It was a voluntary defence, in which I won every round. It wasn’t a great fight, however, I didn’t drop him or even get him rocking, and the sight of the Millennium Stadium nearby was an ironic reminder of the big fight that might have been. So I was still searching for something that I could value as career-defining.

Tocker Pudwill didn’t fall into this category for sure, though it wasn’t my fault that Thomas Tate, an experienced former world-title challenger, had to pull out through injury two weeks before. I was top of the bill with Ricky Hatton, the Newcastle Arena was full and it turned out, as expected, to be a nice, comfortable defence for me, an early Christmas present. I dealt with Pudwill ruthlessly, knocking him down three times in two rounds before the referee stopped it. A lot of people disparaged the guy as an opponent, but Pudwill had gone the full twelve rounds with Sven Ottke for the IBF title two years before and was unbeaten since. I would never claim that it was like taking on King Kong but it always amuses me how wise people try to be. They said he was a bum but why was he a bum, which is a term I hate anyway? Because I stopped him in two rounds? It annoys me that there are so many people who have never laced up a pair of gloves, have spent no time in a gym talking to fighters or trainers to learn about boxing, offering sanctimonious opinions and pontificating and yet they know nothing about the sport. Pudwill wasn’t a danger to me but he was no bum.