Joe Calzaghe rules out in-ring return

News

 The undefeated, former two-weight world champion Joe Calzaghe moved today to quash rumors that he was about to return to the ring.

Ever since he was caught admitting that he had taken cocaine to an undercover reporter, there has been rumblings about his financial situation is weakening and that he is struggling to readjust to life after boxing. Despite the closing of his Calzaghe Promotions business and his father retiring as a trainer there were growing rumors that Calzaghe was contemplating a return to the ring, with Golden Boy CEO Richard Schaefer telling Boxing News that he was interested in staging a rematch between the Welshman and Bernard Hopkins.

As reported by the Press Association, Calzaghe admitted that he had discussed a possible comeback with  Golden Boy and had even begun training for what would have been his 47th professional match. However he soon realised that he didn’t really want to make a return and that even though  “there’s always the chance that some big money will be on offer” you “shouldn’t fight for the money”  and that having got out of boxing undefeated and healthy  he doesn’t want “to push it and get greedy and fall back into that temptation that you would always regret for the rest of your life.”

Of course this is boxing, and one shouldn’t rule out Calzaghe getting even more disgruntled with retired life and finally returning to the ring but this seems to put to end an end any lingering hopes that the likes of Bernard Hopkins or Carl Froch had of fighting the ‘Pride of Wales’. While selfishly I’d love to see Calzaghe box again he obviously cares a great deal about his ‘0’ and it would be deeply unwise for him to risk his hard-earned unbeaten status. This is especially true given the lack of attractive match-ups for him at the moment with the light heavyweight division weaker than it was when he retired and his old stomping grounds at super-middleweight being largely preoccupied by Showtime’s Super Six World Boxing Classic. But above all else there’s simply very little that Calzaghe can prove by coming back as to his critics he’s always going to be somebody who spent too long ducking the biggest fights whilst to his legions of fans he cannot become any more of a hero.

A Comics Nexus original, Will Cooling has written about comics since 2004 despite the best efforts of the industry to kill his love of the medium. He now spends much of his time over at Inside Fights where he gets to see muscle-bound men beat each up without retcons and summer crossovers.