TIME AND PLACE: CALZAGHE VS. JONES

Many questions will be answered by the time Roy Jones, Jr. and Joe Calzaghe are finished with each other on Nov. 8, and the most important of those questions is the simplest of them all: Who are they at this late juncture in their careers?

November 3, 2008 - by Ron Borges

For each this is a major gamble because it is the kind of fight that could cement one's legacy while calling into question many of the accomplishments of the other.

At the ages of 39 and 36 neither Jones nor Calzaghe is quite what he once was yet both have retained enough of their unique skills to possibly fluster and frustrate the other when they square off at Madison Square Garden. Who has the most left of what he used to be will very likely decide the outcome.

At its best, this will be a battle between Jones' rarely seen speed and athleticism and Calzaghe's technical mastery and difficult-to-avoid left-handed style. Normally speed triumphs over all in boxing, but as Jones' speed has declined it has opened him up to being hit more often than would have happened in a decade of fights during his youth. What has naturally followed from such uncomfortable exchanges has put him in jeopardy several times.

As occurred with Muhammad Ali once he was past his prime, all the technical flaws deemed unimportant in Jones' youth have now begun to conspire against him. Punches he once avoided with his reflexes rather than proper technique now land and if they land too often he becomes merely another guy named Jones, not the Roy Jones the boxing world once revered.

That is what allowed both Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson to knock Jones cold four years ago. It is what allowed Tarver to outpoint him in a lackluster rubber match as well.

Yet Jones still retains more speed than most fighters and that helped him come back and slap aging Felix Trinidad around in January as if it were the old days. That fight has led Calzaghe to concede that he has never faced anyone with Jones' hand and foot speed, even in its diminished state. Whether that edge will frustrate him beyond his ability to cope after having struggled against the slickness of Bernard Hopkins is one of the match's most intriguing questions and it is one Calzaghe understands Jones fully intends to ask of him.

"It pisses me off when people say Jones is shot," Calzaghe (45-0, 32 KO) said. "He could cause me more trouble than Kelly Pavlik. He looked good in his last few fights and he played with Trinidad in his last fight. I'm more concerned with Roy Jones than I was about fighting Bernard Hopkins. I will never have been in the ring with anyone as fast as Jones. I would be a fool if I went into this fight underestimating him."

Calzaghe is right about that. Jones' speed will be a major test of Calzaghe's defensive skills and his own superior hand speed. Jones' effective use in the past of a lead right hand is the perfect punch with which to make a left-handed opponent like Calzaghe's life difficult. That lead right, and more importantly the speed with which it is delivered or parried, will very likely be the most telling blow of the fight.

Either it will land repeatedly and do cumulative damage to Calzaghe or it will be negated by Calzaghe's often stingingly accurate right jab and his well known and sometimes confusing defensive prowess.

What may be nearly as big a factor is that despite all his prior success in the ring, Calzaghe sees this fight as his moment to define himself. Long a hero in the United Kingdom, Calzaghe has come back to fight in the U.S. for the second straight time to establish his worth at the top of his weight class and among the best boxers of his time.

Jones understands that kind of motivation will push Calzaghe far, as it did when Hopkins floored him with a flash knockdown in the first round. Calzaghe arose angry at himself and thoroughly out-boxed Hopkins the rest of the night until the former middleweight champion began to clutch and grab in the final two rounds like someone who had begun to realize he was being swallowed by an angry sea of punches.

Couple Calzaghe having publicly said this will be his last prize fight with his normal high work rate and the motivation of facing an opponent he at least believes is one of the best fighters of his time and Jones understands there will be many things he must overcome and counteract.

"Every boxer looks for that one big, epic fight in his career," the always cock-sure Jones said. "The difference here is that he's the one looking for the epic fight, which is a great assumption on his part because after Trinidad Roy is rejuventated."

Certainly that was as sharp as Jones had looked in several years and if he is right that the skills which once had him universally recognized as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world are again well honed, Calzaghe will find himself in with someone whose hand speed will be unlike anything he has faced before.

Yet that does not mean it is enough speed to counteract what Calzaghe brings to the party. He brings a sharp right jab that comes from the opposite angle Jones is used to, the same jab that set up all the destruction that befell former 168-pound champion Jeff Lacy on the night he stood in with Calzaghe and took a fearful beating.

Perhaps more significantly, that jab is followed by a swarming style in which Calzaghe throws punches in a steady, mind-numbing stream. While none of them is telling by itself, they become like a waterfall raining down after a while, confusing and confounding until his opponents find themselves unable or unwilling to answer any longer.

Calzaghe argues work rate, superior defense and that straight right jab are his advantages and Jones does not totally disagree.

"People underestimate Joe Calzaghe," Jones (52-4, 38 KO) conceded. "They say he slaps but you don't see a guy have the hand troubles he's had if he can't punch. He stopped Byron Mitchell (in two rounds five years ago) so that tells me that he can punch. They used to say the same thing about me and they still got knocked out.

"People say Joe Calzaghe is too busy for me. They say he's too active for me. They say Roy Jones can't beat Joe Calzaghe. That's what they say.

"That motivates me because I like to do what I'm not supposed to do. This will be the most exciting fight of Calzaghe's career because he's fighting the best fighter he ever faced. If he beats me, he beat the best me there is. No excuses from Roy Jones.

"When I come into the boxing ring the people know they're going to see things they never seen before. He ain't never seen anyone like me."

The same may be true of the predicament Jones could find himself in against Calzaghe. Not only does he fight out of the always troubling left-handed stance but both the volume of his punches and the manner in which he often seems to slap more than fire off hard power shots makes him oddly more difficult to counter. These are difficulties Jones will have to sort out for himself.

Once there was a time when any such problems in the ring seemed of little consequence to Jones, but that is no longer the case. Calzaghe will present stylistic problems not easily solved by the fighter Jones has become today. For one of the few times in his career, Jones finds himself the betting underdog because of his age and the fact that Calzaghe is a large step up from the three fighters he's faced since Tarver and Johnson knocked him cold four years ago. Jones attributes his problems then to rapid weight loss after defeating WBA heavyweight champion John Ruiz and the toll that took on his body. After losing another decision to Tarver in 2005, Jones took nearly 10 months off before launching a three-fight comeback that culminated with his dominating defeat of Trinidad in the same ring where he will challenge Calzaghe.

That night he twice dropped the former welterweight and middleweight champion and proved to be vastly superior in both boxing skill and speed. It was a night that, on paper at least, seemed to turn back the clock.

Then again, by the time Jones climbs into the ring he will be two months shy of 40 years old and five and a half years removed from his crowning moment, his bamboozling victory over Ruiz. That he is not the same man who once dominated boxing is apparent, so who will he be on the night he meets the undefeated Welshman?

Will Jones be an aging legend but a legend still or a shadow of the one who used to be? At least one guy believes he knows the answer, which is why he'll be standing in the corner opposite from The Pride of Wales spoiling for a fight.

"He's gonna see things he's never seen before," Jones has promised.

Yet the larger question is what does his best still hold? Not only has he lost his last three significant fights, two of them by knockout, but Jones has not stopped anyone since he TKO'd Clinton Woods over six years ago to successfully defend the seven versions of the light heavyweight title that were at stake that night.

The most significant fact emerging from the Trinidad fight then might not be those knockdowns or the fight's one-sided nature but rather the fact that Jones was unable to finish him even though Trinidad was a blown up welterweight who had already proven he could not stand up to the middleweight punches of Hopkins. Trinidad twice pushed himself off the floor against a light heavyweight who was bigger, fitter and stronger than he was and Jones was unable to finish him off as he would of in his youth.

Now he will be in with a naturally bigger, obviously fitter and clearly more active opponent in Calzaghe, so might Jones find himself unable to hurt him? If so, what will his speed mean then? Jones, of course, has his own theory about that, as he does most things.

"I couldn't believe he stayed in there for 12 rounds," Jones said of Trinidad. "I was missing knocking him out by an inch. He's got a hard head."

So does Calzaghe, who held the super middleweight title for a decade and seldom has been even momentarily hurt. The knockdown against Hopkins, for example, seemed more irksome to him than troubling.

That being the case, perhaps the biggest question that remains to be answered Nov. 8 is what happens if, at some point, Roy Jones, Jr. realizes he's never seen anything quite like Joe Calzaghe either?