Joe Calzaghe!
Joseph William Calzaghe CBE (/kælˈzæɡi/ kal-ZAH-gee; born 23 March 1972) is a Welsh former professional boxer who competed from 1993 to 2008. He held world championships in two weight classes, including the unified WBA (Super), WBC, IBF, WBO, Ring magazine and lineal super-middleweight titles, and the Ring light-heavyweight title.[2]
Calzaghe is the longest-reigning super-middleweight world champion in boxing history, having held the WBO title for over 10 years and defending the title against 20 boxers (a record in the division, shared with Sven Ottke) before moving up to light-heavyweight. As his super-middleweight and light-heavyweight reigns overlapped, he retired with the longest continual time as world champion of any active boxer at the time. Calzaghe was also the first boxer to unify three of the four major world titles (WBA, WBC, and WBO) at super-middleweight, and was the first Ring champion in that weight class.
Between 2006 and 2008, Calzaghe was ranked by The Ring as one of the world’s top ten active boxers, pound for pound,[3] reaching a peak ranking of third in January 2009.[4] He retired in February 2009 with an undefeated record, and as a reigning world champion.[5] As of 2020, BoxRec ranks Calzaghe as the seventh greatest fighter of all time, pound for pound, as well as the greatest European boxer of all time.[6][7]
Calzaghe was often referred to as the “Pride of Wales” or the “Italian Dragon”,[8] the latter being a play on the moniker “Italian Stallion” and a reference to his multiple heritages (the dragon being both a prominent Welsh emblem that appears on the Welsh flag and a figure in Sardinian myth).
In 2007, Calzaghe won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award,[9] making him the first Welsh winner of this award since David Broome in 1960. Calzaghe was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2014.[10]
Calzaghe was born in Hammersmith, London, to an Italian (Sardinian) father, Enzo, and a Welsh mother, Jackie.[11] His paternal grandparents settled in Britain after the Second World War, during which his grandfather Giuseppe had served in the 12th Infantry Division Sassari, but had returned to live in Italy by the end of the 1950s. Calzaghe’s father, worked several jobs as a teenager in Italy, including as a barman, a chef and a cleaner before, travelling Europe as a busker. He eventually arrived back in Britain to visit family in Bournemouth. It was during this time that Calzaghe’s parents met, his mother hailed from the mining town of Markham, Caerphilly. The couple married and briefly moved to Sardinia but returned shortly after when Calzaghe’s mother became homesick. The couple settled in London, his father working two jobs in a factory and a bed and breakfast while his mother worked as a secretary in the offices of production company 20th Century Fox.[12]
Calzaghe was born in Hammersmith Hospital in March 1972,[12] before his father decided to move the family back to Sardinia at the end of the year, living in his grandfather’s home in Bancali. However, his mother again pushed to return to Britain and the family lived with his maternal grandmother in Markham for three years before they moved into their own home on a council estate in Pentwynmawr, Newbridge, near Caerphilly, in South Wales. He attended the local school, Pentwynmawr Primary, along with his two sisters, Melissa and Sonia, and developed a keen interest in playing football. He joined Pentwynmawr F.C. at under-10s level, playing as a midfielder and scored consistently during his early years.[13]
At the age of eight, he was given a children’s boxing toy that developed his interest in the sport and his father made a punching bag from an old carpet.[13] He joined his first boxing club, Newbridge Amateur Boxing Club at ten years old and the sport quickly took priority for the young Calzaghe as he gave up playing football after two years.[14] Calzaghe moved on to Oakdale Comprehensive School at 11, but was targeted by bullies as a teenager, becoming the target of regular verbal abuse that left him isolated. Although the culprits left him alone after a year, Calzaghe later admitted that he “never recovered from the abuse” and left school without sitting any of his GCSEs.[15]
Calzaghe was the first person to be awarded the Freedom of Caerphilly County Borough, in 2009.[16] The award was presented to Calzaghe in front of his family — father and trainer Enzo, mother Jackie, sister Sonia, (then) girlfriend Jo-Emma Larvin, and his two sons.[17]
Already an MBE,[18] he was elevated to CBE in the 2008 Queen’s Birthday Honours.[19]
In 120 amateur contests, Calzaghe won four schoolboy ABA titles, followed by three consecutive senior British ABA titles (British Championships) between 1990 and 1993, which were won in three different weight categories, welterweight, light middleweight and middleweight.[20] He reportedly had an amateur record of 110–10. Calzaghe received his last two defeats in a boxing ring at the hands of Michael Smyth in the 1990 Welsh ABA Final, and against Romanian amateur Adrian Opreda at the 1990 European Junior Championships in Prague.[21][22]
In September 1993 Calzaghe was signed up and made his professional debut at Cardiff Arms Park on the Lennox Lewis vs. Frank Bruno bill the following month, halting 23 fight veteran Paul Hanlon in one round. By September 1995, Calzaghe had won thirteen out of thirteen fights, including seven in the first round and two in the second, including quickfire victories over the highly experienced American duo of Frank Minton and Robert Curry, with only the fully fledged British Light Heavyweight Bobbie Joe Edwards lasting the distance.
In October 1995, Calzaghe won the vacant British super-middleweight title, stopping the previously unbeaten Stephen Wilson in the eighth round.
At the end of 1995, Calzaghe was voted Young Boxer of the Year by the Professional Boxing Association and the Boxing Writers’ Club, with Barry McGuigan top tipping Calzaghe for 1996: “He punches ferociously, moves superbly and has the best of the European technique and US aggression.”[23]
After beginning 1996 with two more quick knockouts over Guy Stanford and Anthony Brooks, he successfully defended his British title with an easier-than-expected fifth round stoppage of the tough undefeated puncher Mark Delaney (21–0). Despite Delaney being a good fighter in his own right, Calzaghe’s critics said that he had still not really been tested. Calzaghe said in reply that he could only beat whoever was out there and prepared to fight him. Calzaghe rounded off the year with victories over two experienced opponents in Warren Stowe and Pat Lawlor.
In November 1996, Calzaghe moved to Frank Warren‘s stable. Warren, who had managed Nigel Benn for his first twenty fights, declared: “Joe Calzaghe is a far better prospect, in fact he is my fighter for the new millennium.”[24] Calzaghe continued his winning ways in 1997, defeating Carlos Christie, the unbeaten Tyler Hughes and the 45–2 Luciano Torres. Meanwhile, Warren spent the summer of 1997 chasing a fight for Calzaghe with either WBC Champion Robin Reid or Irish WBO Champion Steve Collins. The fight with Collins was arranged, but at a late stage Collins withdrew because of injury, was stripped of his title, and then retired.
Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Calzaghe
