ARENA: Calzaghe Interview

First and foremost apologies for the lengh and pictures. My scanner ain't working at the current time.

I'm sitting here nursing an injury and a little bored so I decided that to continue building up the anticipation for the upcoming Calzaghe/Hopkins fight I would post quotations and upload some pictures from a Joe Calzaghe interview which is printed in this months edition of ARENA. Incase you have not heard of this mag it's a British monthly men's magazine similar to GQ. I had heard a few months back that Calzaghe had been approached regarding doing a photoshoot but hadn't heard much since. Then earlier in the week when I finished work I was browsing the magazine aisle and decided to pick it up when I spotted it on the shelf. Enjoy.

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Credit to:
Interview: Dominic Calder-Smith
Photograph: Ben Watts
Styling: Steve Morriss

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Joe Calzaghe is Britain's best boxer. Undefeated for 10 years, he could have become blase. Instead, he's heading to Las Vegas, where boxing fortunes are made and lost, to face his most formidable opponent yet.

Joe Calzaghe has reigned as world champion for more than 10 years. During this time he has defended his WBO super-middleweight title on 21 occasions, defeated seven champions and unified against rival belt-holders.

But only in the last 24 months has he made the transition from well-respected member of the boxing community to mainstream idol; supreme in his ITV-televised victory over the highly-favoured American Jeff Lacy in March 2006 and winner of the BBC's Sports Personality Of The Year award in December 2007. Now pop stars want to shake his hand and sing national anthems at his fights, Premier League footballers are in awe of his talent and Sylvester Stallone (or 'Sly' as Calzaghe calls him) has his mobile number.

Before a small crowd of onlookers, Calzaghe and his friend Enzo Maccarinelli complete their six rounds of sparring. Calzaghe taps his pal on the waist and they embrace. The gym is chily, but sweat, saliva and mucus drip from their faces and arms. Little shrouds of steam rise from their shoulders and necks. Calzaghe's face is a glistening pink as he clicks the guard from his mouth and accepts water from a bottle before his gloves are untied and his hands released to flex and shadow box from within the tightened condines of their bandaging.

For 20 minutes he hits the heavy bag, rat-a-tat-tatting cheek little shots which might not hurt but bamboozle, feints with extravagant shoulder movements, then slams home the power-punch. The hoisted contraption shudders violently.

Ten minutes later we are in the locker room. Calzaghe is sitting on a bench, dabbing at his face with a towel, joking with his mates from the gym and cheerfully seeking reassurance from me that some of their more inappropriate contributions to our interview won't make the final copy.

The thumbing of bags and cracking of ropes has ended. Behind us are posters of Calzaghe's title fights. Someone has given Charles Brewer - another vanquished American - a Hercule Poirot moustache and a pair of spectacles.

''That's the only thing missing from my career,'' says Calzaghe, whose unbeaten record of 44 fights include 32 wins by knockout. ''Fighting in Las Vegas. Right now, it's about all that's left to get me excited. And fighting Bernard Hopkins in Vegas definetly gets me excited.

''When I went to watch Ricky Hatton fight Floyd Mayweather there, seeing all the tremendous support Ricky had, I thought to myself right then. 'I definitely want some of this before I retire'. It would have been a shame, really, never to have seen my name up in lights out there. Now it's happenening. And I'm going to become one of the few British fighters to go over there and do the business.''

It wasn't always like this. Calzaghe was born in London in 1972, to Sardinian father Enzo and Welsh mother Jackie. Enzo, an all-round boxing and fitness fanati, was a strict diciplinarian. By the time the family relocated to Newport when Joe was nine, he was already being put through his paces in the gym.

''When I was a kid I used to love watching the Rocky movies'' he says. ''They'd be on late at night, so my Dad would record them for me and I'd hurry home from school to watch them. The first ones are probably my favourites, they're awesome! They went a bit downhill after Rocky III, though didn't they?''

By the time his championship days commences, Eubank was in the twilight of his career, Benn was finished and Steve Collins had been forced into retirement with a brain injury, In America, James Toney had eaten his way out of serious contention, and the only possible big-name rival, Roy Jones Jr, was consistently averse to waging war in Europe.

When Jones moved up in weight, Calzaghe's dream of securing a superfight appeared doomed and the bleak prospect of plugging away against obsecure challengers from Croatia and Armenia remained. Things changed for the better, however in the muscular, ominous form of Jee 'Left Hook' Lacy.

What eventually took place in the ring was one of the most exquisite technical performances by a fighter of any nationality, ever. Calzaghe took Lacy apart, mentally and physically. He grinned and swayed and pivote before the ineffective early-rounds bombardments, stung, damaged and laccerated the Americans with his blinding hand-speat, and beat him so badly that even the partisan crowd at the MEN Arena in Manchester winced at the failure of Lacy's corner to submit on their man's behalf.

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On 19 April, at the Thomas & Mack Centre in Las Vegas, Calzaghe will clash with world lightheavyweight champions Bernard 'The Executioner' Hopkins.

Hopkins is himself an extraoridnary fighter. He has been a pro for 20 years, pretty much from the moment he completed a seven-year prison sentence for armed robbery in his hometown of Philadelphia. He reigned as world middleweight champions from 1995-2005, and while his resume was dented somewhat by two controversial losses to the young Jermain Taylor that brought about the end of that reign, it has reached another level since he rose two weight divisions to capture the world light heavyweight title from Antonio Tarver - a man perhaps better known for his portrayal of Stallone's oppenent Mason 'The Line' Dixon in Rocky Balboa.

Hopkins lives like a Spartan, helping him remain his remarkable fitness for a man of 43, and trains like one two. Prior to toppling Tarver his best wins were knockouts of the lthal Felix Trinidad (on an emotional New Tor evening at Madison Square Garden , just two weeks after the 9/11 atrocities) and a body shot KO of the sport's biggest money spinner, Oscar De La Hoya.

Those crushing wins aside, Hopkins is usually methodicial rather than explosive. But whle he has short shrift for Calzaghe's opposition thus far (You take awau the left hook from a one-dimensional fighter like Jeff 'Left Hook' Lacy and all he becomes is Jee 'No Hook' Lacy''), Calzaghe isn't exactly blown away by the names of those who have kneeled before Hopkins' axe.

''He fought well against Tarver, but let's face it Tarver was useless on the night, utter rubbish. Obviously making that Rocky film didn't help his preparations. All Tarver was able to do that night was make Hopkins look good. To be honest, he gave a better performance as a fighter in the film than he did in the ring with Hopkins, although apparently even Stallone was shaking him about a bit in sparring! That tells you something doesn't it?!''

''Whatever he wants to say, I don't really care at all. The truth is always found in the ring. In the ring is what you get. I've seen Hopkins' performances and nothing about them scares me or worries me. I'd have beaten him when he was at his peak, and I'll beat him now. I wanted to box him years ago but he bottled it.''

''I don't give a **** about egos, about him calling himself a legend - tm me, he's not a legend, he's just another name to put on my CV. That's the way I look at it. At the end of the day, I'm just going to expose him.''

''I've never been a fan - I don't like his style, it's a bit crude, a bit negative, a bit dirty. You've got to give credit where credit's due: he's very, very goo, but in me he'll be up against something he's never experienced before.''

''He keeps saying what a hard guy he is, serving time in the penitentiary and all that, and then the next thing I've seen him cryling like a baby because of the cold - that shows you what the guy's like, doesn't it?''

''I like training to Linkin Park, and I like the Black Eyed Peas too. When I'm not training I like to have a few beers, nothing fancy - I prefer going to a few nice wine bars on a Friday evening rather than nightclubs, spending time with my family.

''I'll be losing one stone rather than two this time, so it'll be a little easier, but it's still a struggle'' he days. ''I have to eat low-fat foods for at least eight weeks. Fighting is the easy part.''

''A few years back maybe a fight like this, going to Vegas, might have got to me a bit. But now? I'm totally relaxed.''

He insists talk of retirement is not fuelled by the fear of losing. ''Personally I think I could keep on going until I'm 40, because I'm as good as I ever was, even better - me today would have kicked the arse ouf the fighter I was five years ago, without a doubt. And it's not the fear of getting hurt - I saw what happened to Michael Watson and Gerald McClellan, but everybody knows the risks involved in boxing. At the end of the day you go in there to beat the **** out of each other basically.''

''The thing is, mentally, it gets more and more difficult to tune myself up every time, to keep going, keep training, training, training. This fight and then maybe one more, and then I'll call it a day and strick to it. I'm a pretty lazy ******* to be honest, so I can't say I'm gonna miss the training! But I do love boxing, and see myself staying in it, whether as a manager, a promoter or a trainer. I'll always be involved in this sport. It's in my blood.

Here, in the Abercarn valley, he is one of the boys. But this month, in Vegas, he may well be anointed the greatest British boxer in history. And there would be nothing ordinary about that.

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Cheers :smoke