Joe Calzaghe "Boxing kept me alive. It was my salvation.”

Writing in a London newspaper, Calzaghe revealed how in his third year at Oakdale Comprehensive, he fell victim to a prolonged campaign of bullying.
He said: “For close to two years I was taunted, called names and blanked by old friends. I was rejected by everybody at a time when all you want as a kid is to fit in.”
He recalled that on one occasion 30 children on BMX bikes cycled to his family home looking for a fight.
He said: “I remember looking out of my bedroom window and seeing them coming up the road, into the cul-de-sac of the council estate where we lived.
“Most would have had to cycle about five miles but some lived locally and had been friends since I was three or four. I think that hurt the most.”
Calzaghe’s father, Enzo, told the youths if they wanted to fight his son, they would have to do so one at a time.
Calzaghe said: “They scarpered. I was 13 and I found out later they’d all planned to take me down the park, jump me and give me a good kicking.
“It turned me from a happy, outgoing kid who enjoyed school into an introverted wreck.”
The champion fighter, 36, said: “If bullying can still have an impact on me after all these years, and after all I’ve achieved, then think what it’s doing to thousands of kids right now.”
Calzaghe said the name calling, laughing and insults in the playground led him to lose all confidence.
“During class I didn’t concentrate because I was on tenterhooks for the next insult or for something to hit my back. Every night I would feel sick just thinking about what classes I had the next day.
“It took me to breaking point”, he said.
But boxing became Calzaghe’s release from the hell he faced at school. The year the bullying started was the year he won his first amateur title.
He said: “I became two people. On Saturday I was raising my ABA trophy above my head. The next night I was sick and crying at the thought of going to school the next day.
“Boxing kept me alive. It was my salvation.”


If that ever happened to my son I'd want to kill them all, but revenge is a dish best served cold 'Champ'.:good

 

Yes he is Hoya and i agree, they need beating.

 

:rofl I wouldn't want Enzo face to chest with me!