Retired Calzaghe Already Planning Comeback

There is no concrete evidence to support the claim that the recently retired Welsh fighter Joe Calzaghe is fated to return to boxing, but any student of the sweet science will tell you that these words -- “You never know what might happen in the future” -- are a tried-and-true code in the annals of fistiana as instantly recognizable as the Terminator’s tagline -- “I’ll be back.”↵↵The fact that Calzaghe uttered these magic words about the future and “you never know” and whatnot, uttered them almost immediately after announcing his retirement, has most of the world’s boxing acolytes feeling certain that it is a question of “when” and not “if” Calzaghe will return to the ring. ↵

↵↵Sugar Ray Leonard, who knows about such things, recently said about Calzaghe’s retirement, “When you are a retired fighter, you are just one big purse away from a comeback.” Leonard made two ill-advised comebacks at the end of his career, getting destroyed by Terry Norris in 1991 and then embarrassed by Macho Camacho in 1997, when Leonard was 41 years old and had absolutely no right being in the ring as anything but a cornerman.↵

↵↵Of course, Calzaghe is, if not in his prime, far from used up right now. At 36 years old, he’s a viable champion, undefeated on his career. In April of last year he beat Bernard Hopkins, who subsequently dominated the then-undefeated middleweight king Kelly Pavlik. ↵

↵↵What’s more, unlike Ray Leonard, Calzaghe’s legacy is far from settled in the minds of most of boxing’s cognoscenti. Add to that the fact that for a 36-year-old who has held a major title for over 12 years, Calzaghe didn’t exactly make an unspendable fortune over the course of his career, and I think it’s safe to assume that when Calzaghe says, “you never know what might happen in the future,” what he’s really saying is that he knows exactly what’s going to happen. In other words, when there are enough zeroes on the end of that check, he’ll be back in the squared circle like Welsh on rarebit. ↵

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