"I really take my hat off to Carl for going over to America and taking on Taylor"

"...I'm sure there were easier ways to defend his title than going to the US and I'm sincere when I wish Carl all the best although it will be a very tough night for him. Carl did well winning the title and if he didn't talk so much about me then maybe I'd give him more compliments." - Joe Calzaghe





“Joe is never going to have anything nice to say about me, is he?

“After all, he ducked fighting me for years so it won’t come as any surprise to hear him say something like that.

“OK, I don’t mind what he says that much. He has his choice and everyone is entitled to that.

“But Joe is now done and dusted and retired.

“The fact is that he vacated his world title rather than fight me and everyone knows that.

“It would have been the fight the British public wanted but, after years of fighting bums of the month in his very own comfort zone of Cardiff, the fact that he decided to call it quits tells its own story.

“Unlike him, I’m not interested in defending my title for the next five years against *nobody fighters.

“I am who I am and that is why I will be the kind of champion I am, beginning with the defence against Taylor in style.

“That will show that I have achieved something in my first defence that Calzaghe waited around eight years to do – by fighting someone outside that comfort zone.

“I am doing it because I want to do it and I am doing it away from the relative comfort of Britain and that is the kind of challenge I really, really do relish.”

The digs from Calzaghe clearly still hurt Froch, who said of the Welshman: “In his final fights he fought a 43-year-old Bernard Hopkins and a 40-year-old Roy Jones Jnr.

“It was very clever what he did. He fought the so-called big names and got the money in relatively easy fights. But he still managed to get floored twice and get a split decision.

“Now, unlike him, I have put the pressure on myself to do the business on Saturday night.” - Carl "The Cobra" Froch