an extract from a daily mail article. it's got all the boxing points in it. reasonably interesting: The first surprise on meeting him is how unlike a boxer he looks. He is just under 6ft tall and stockily built, but his face is unmangled. He's never had his nose broken ('because I'm too fast'), and the only physical evidence of his career is found in his 'lumpy and bumpy' hands because of how broken bones have healed. He puts the famous hands on the table. 'They were part of the reason I quit. Every hand injury takes longer to heal. The doctors basically told me that if I went on, I would be risking real damage there - arthritis and stuff.' He also knew it was only a matter of time before that nose got busted. 'You can't cheat the odds for ever. In time, my kids were going to see me get my face smashed in, or worse. 'On my last fight I was on the floor, and my sons were sobbing their hearts out. I promised them then that I would stop. 'You do think about it more as you get older. You'd never forgive yourself if something happened, it doesn't matter how much money you got.' So now it is over for good, he insists. Do we have permission to shoot him if he ever goes back in the ring again? 'Categorically, I will never fight again. Never!' he replies. 'I can see why those guys do, though. It isn't just money. 'Some fighters can't walk away from the buzz and the adrenalin. They are addicted. There's no buzz like winning a fight.' Does he ever expect to feel that sort of elation again, about anything? 'No,' he says. Not even if the Strictly judges break into a Mexican wave when he performs the perfect tango? Sadly, no. 'I don't expect anything will ever compare, but that's not to say I have any regrets about quitting. I don't miss boxing. I don't miss the starving myself. I don't miss getting punched in the head. I do miss the training, but that's where Strictly comes in - it allows me to focus like I always did for a fight.' He must mention 'focus' about 20 times during our interview. Joe says his main one has always been for his boys, who are now 15 and 12. There was an acrimonious divorce from their mum Mandy - she claimed, but failed to secure half of his future earnings in the settlement - but they now amicably share custody, and Joe insists he and Mandy now get along fine. He was very much the family man as he rose through the boxing ranks. He credits his domestic set-up with most of his success. 'If I'd been a single guy, I tell you 100 per cent that I would never have been world champion for as long as I was. I might not have been world champion at all because kids give you focus. 'Family life is important. You need to be grounded. You need somebody there. You can't be going out clubbing, having loads of women around the place. Eight weeks before a fight you have to be in, living like a fighter, and a fighter's life is pretty boring: you don't eat much; you don't drink; you get up in the morning and run, then go training again, then you come in and go to bed early. That's the life.' Play fight: Joe and Kristina backstage on the Strictly Come Dancing set It must be hard for a wife to fit into such a disciplined existence, though. Why did he and Mandy split? He doesn't want to go into details. 'I don't know. It happens. I probably got married too young, but people do. We got two incredible children out of it and they are my life.' He would be devastated, though, if they followed him into the ring. 'I did it so they don't have to,' he says sharply. 'I would not want them to be fighters, and they don't need to be.' So why did he, then? He talks in terms of the 'hunger' that propelled him to take the sport seriously. He means financial hunger - 'We had nothing, and I saw it as a way out.' Also emotional. The young Calzaghe was bullied at school, partly because of his mixed heritage (his father Enzo is Sardinian, his mother Welsh). 'I didn't care about physical bullying. Lads fighting? That was just one-on-one, not a problem. But the mental stuff was different, the not being spoken to, pushed out. I couldn't handle it. Boxing was my escape. I'd just go to the gym and train, train, train.' He tells me that he has never in his life feared an opponent - 'I've only ever feared losing. The last time I got beat was as an amateur in Prague in 1990 and I still remember the feeling. I cried like a baby, sobbed my heart out.'