/ 18 April 2008

Ageing vs aged in a well-matched bout

Within minutes of touching down at McCarran Airport in Las Vegas after an 11-hour flight from London, Joe Calzaghe roused his small entourage, went into the desert and did something he doesn’t do even at home in Newbridge, south Wales: he ran for seven miles.

”I was knackered,” he says, ”but I made myself do it.”

This seemingly routine act spoke louder than the many thousands of words expended this past few weeks in promoting Calzaghe’s debut at light-heavyweight at the Thomas & Mack Centre on Saturday against the brooding old Philadelphian, Bernard ”The Executioner” Hopkins.

Calzaghe’s preferred state when not stirred to the heights of physical alertness in a boxing ring is horizontal, phone-off-the-hook detachment.

He obviously wants to beat Hopkins, to remain unconquered at 36 with one more fight after this one, to post victory number 45 on his log and to show the Americans he is no small-town Joe.

This is a fight that will define the careers of two of boxing’s most distinguished long-service servants.

Hopkins, for all his street-hip menace, is on edge about the challenge, more nervous than he lets on, as any 43-year-old pugilist has a right to be up against an opponent who has not lost for 17 years.

He signalled his intent when he put together his gym team of Freddie Roach, one of the industry’s most respected trainers, Nazim Richardson and ace conditioner Mackie Shilstone. There is no complacency there. Hopkins knows Calzaghe is not ”just another southpaw”. And he will be further galvanised to strain for his best boxing by the news that Calzaghe is also in a heightened state.

There is no title on the line here, apart from acknowledgment by the Ring magazine.

While Calzaghe and Hopkins affect nonchalance — as great fighters do in the hours before meaningful combat – their connections are not so blasé.

Richardson talks about Hopkins having beaten other acknowledged great fighters, unbeaten champions, claiming Calzaghe has not. That, he says, gives his man an edge. And it ignores those contests an ageing Hopkins has lost recently: two against Jermaine Taylor, back to back in 2005.

Richardson says: ”Calzaghe, he’s an action fighter, he forces you to watch him … But Calzaghe has to solve the Hopkins problem, not the other way around.”

There will be no mind games in this bout, no inbuilt advantage, no intimidation by either man. They are superbly matched in ability. It will come down to the simplest of quantifiable factors: age.

If Calzaghe is as up as he seemed to be as he headed for the desert, he will beat Hopkins by the seven years nature has put between them. — Â