No Ordinary Joe

Friends don’t always make the best judges. I remember sitting ringside at Caesars Palace in Las Vegas with Michael J. Fox for Marvin Hagler’s fight against John ‘The Beast’ Mugabi. Marvin was a guy I watched religiously. I knew he’d fought two tough fights against Tommy Hearns and Roberto Duran and I knew he was getting older, then against Mugabi I could see that the fights were taking their toll. He beat Mugabi but he was slowing down. I turned to Michael – we were drinking a few beers – and I told him, ‘I can beat this guy.’ Michael looked at me like I was crazy. ‘Ray,’ he said, ‘have another beer.’ The rest is history.

Exactly twenty years later I was in Eddie Murphy’s home in Los Angeles to watch Joe Calzaghe fight Jeff Lacy. Eddie follows the fights and, like Michael, he’s a great actor, but he should stick to acting. Lacy got in the ring, Eddie took one look at his big barrel chest, his muscular torso and six-pack, and announced with a huge grin, ‘Man, this Calzaghe guy, he has no chance.’

In fairness to Eddie, he wasn’t alone in picking Lacy. I had never seen Joe fight before. Of course, I’d heard about him, but the way the fight was billed in the United States he was the opponent and Jeff Lacy was the superstar. I must have watched Lacy in half a dozen or more of his fights and I could see why he generated excitement. He could punch, and some people, commentators in the business, were comparing him to a young Mike Tyson. He was going through opponents with blazing speed. Pure destruction. Not having seen Joe, not knowing him, I figured that Lacy’s manager and promoter had set up their hot young property to look good against an ageing thirty-three-year-old fighter with a good record, as is frequently the case. So it wasn’t just Eddie, I figured Lacy would win too.

Within two rounds, however, I was a Joe Calzaghe supporter. I was stood up in front of the TV, shouting, ‘Wow, holy shit, look at this guy!’ The performance he produced was amazing. It was artistic, a demonstration of pure boxing. Joe would have beat anyone with that style, that mindset. What he performed was a boxing clinic, masterful. I’m a fan too and it gives me enormous pleasure to see my peers succeed, especially in a way that is awe-inspiring. This was Joe’s great accomplishment, to reach that level, to scale that peak.

We met for the first time in a London hotel two days after he fought Sakio Bika. This was his second title bout of 2006 and a completely different kind of fight, which I was able to view while in Britain and Ireland on a speaking tour. I had the same type of fight against Duran the first time we met. I’ll never forget, he had eyes like Charles Manson, the serial killer, he was one scary-looking man and, psychologically, he got to me. He took me out of my game and I found myself fighting a different kind of fight, toe-to-toe, mano-a-mano with the Hands of Stone. It wasn’t the brightest decision I ever made. My cornermen tried frantically to get me to box but I was like a racehorse with the blinkers on. I fought Duran in a way I thought I could beat him and, even though I lost the decision after fifteen rounds, I gained a different kind of respect for engaging this man in such a tough, physical battle, almost a street fight. We fought three times in total, the second time I humiliated him and he quit, the third time I had sixty stitches after the fight, twenty inside my mouth. So Joe coming out against Bika with only six stitches around his eye did pretty well. What he was made to do – and what I did against Duran – was show his versatility and his resilience.

I really admire Joe for being the fighter he is but as we sat down and talked I quickly realised that he has a very appealing personality. The reason people celebrate my career and look up to me is down to the way I was brought up by my parents. They always told me to respect people: ‘You give respect, you see respect.’ Joe has the same values. He’s a humble guy and this is why we hit it off so well. We talked like we were brothers and I’m glad we had that time together because now I admire the person he is also and I’m honoured to have been asked to write this foreword to his life story.

With his looks, his humility, his natural charm and his ability, he has the potential to become larger than life in the American sports market and I’d really like to see him do this. The top fighters around his weight – Jermain Taylor, Winky Wright, even Bernard Hopkins – Joe beats them all, if he fights the way he fought against Lacy. I keep coming back to that fight because in those twelve rounds Joe made such an impact. We need that. We need those moments. We need action that lingers in the memory, be it Muhammad Ali coming off the ropes against George Foreman to knock him out or Hearns knocking out Duran or Sugar Ray climbing off the canvas to win against Donny Lalonde. I won the WBC super middleweight title that night, which kind of gets me thinking about how today’s super middleweight king might have done against me. I’ll go to my grave believing I could have beaten Mike Tyson, so Joe and me? Even Eddie Murphy and Michael J. Fox could tell you the winner of that mythic match-up.