BERT SUGAR'S POST-FIGHT ANALYSIS

November 11, 2008 - by Bert Randolph Sugar

Forgive us our press passes, but many of those professional weight-guessers in the press corps, drugged with a sense of reconstituted past, believed that Roy Jones Jr. could make the soufflé rise twice and make a fight of it against Joe Calzaghe. But it was a train of thought that never quite reached its destination.

In as sad an ending to a career as Madison Square Garden has seen since Joe Louis was rendered senseless by Rocky Marciano, an old and utterly defenseless Roy Jones was given what Muhammad Ali would call "an old-fashion ass whuppin'" by "The Pride of Wales." Oh sure, Roy had his moments--make that moment, singular--when he caught Calzaghe with a pluperfect right hand in the first, dropping him to the canvas. But Calzaghe, who has made it a habit of being knocked down in the first round, was up quickly, throwing punches.

From that point on, round-after-round, almost like the watering of last year's crops, it was Calzaghe throwing and Jones catching, Calzaghe's punches coming in bunches, so many they would have rattled a bookkeeper's mind--and somewhat above the union limit at 985 by bout's end, according to CompuBox's figures.

By the third Calzaghe was taunting Jones, sticking his chin out and holding his arms to his side, daring Jones to hit him. But there was no there there as Jones threw one punch at a time and then rested, bivouacking stock-still against the ropes in a manner patented by Lot's wife as he tried to stave off the avalanche of punches coming from the direction of Calzaghe.

As round followed round the bout could be called competitive only in the same way raisins are considered fruits--technically and only in a manner of speaking. For it was Calzaghe on the offense, his punches flowing almost like a river without banks--most "pit-a-pat" punches followed by hard body shots--and Jones on the defensive, his hands up around his ears, like earmuffs, unable to stem the tide.

By the seventh, with Jones looking tired and dispirited, the sand flowing to the bottom of his hourglass and the blood flowing from a nasty cut over his left eye he had suffered from one--or several--of Calzaghe's punches, the outcome was set in stone. And still Calzaghe, like a juggler, never varied his routine, continuing to lace Jones with punch-after-punch as Jones could do little except maybe wait for a Federal bail-out.

The unanimous decision merely confirmed what all had seen: Calzaghe won every round except the first, adding the pelt of Jones to his belt and "growing" his record to 46-0.

What's next for Calzaghe? Will he now retire as he had announced he would before the fight? Or will his retirement be one of the shortest on record as he comes back and tries to match or best Marciano's 49 and Oh? And for Jones? There's nowhere for him to go now, having joined that long list of champions who stayed around too long. Hell, Napoleon had more fun at Waterloo than Jones had at Madison Square Garden last Saturday night.