Saturday,
April 19, 2008
Joe Calzaghe vs Bernard Hopkins, Light Heavy Bout in Vegas on Sat. April
19
The
ANNOTICO Report
The
Joe Calzaghe story is unlikely in many respects. Born
in Wales, with Italian immigrant dad Enzo, who with no previous boxing
experience, started training his son Joe at 8 years old to be a boxer, and has
guided him for 28 years, to a record 44-0 as a pro,
Joe
won the WBO super-middleweight title in 1997 and defended it 21 times, but
until 2006, his talent was questioned by critics.
Then he
throttled vaunted American Jeff Lacy in 2006, and
It
is startling that as incendiary as their relationship is, that it has endured
and prospered. And as colorful as their father-son exchanges are, Joe is a
polite, modest, self effacing "bloke".
It is also refreshing to see that Joe has chosen to continue to live in this
Welch village through all his success, and eschewed the bright lights and big
city, and is on a first name basis with all the villagers, who take great pride
in their favorite son.
Fights with Father Make Joe Calzaghe a Better Boxer
The
popular British sportsman, training and battling with his dad for years, is
44-0 as a pro going into
By
Chuck Culpepper
Special to The Times
April 18, 2008
NEWBRIDGE,
Yet again, an irascible father has trained his irascible son in the emotionally
freighted pursuit of boxing, and although this act of near-lunacy occurs fairly
often in the sport, these two have been at it for almost three decades,
attempting to refrain from strangling one another.
If you listen to them mine the British lexicon, you will hear they've grown
routinely tetchy with each other. They've even gotten narky. They do have their barneys, and in
these barneys they
use language downright Scorseseian.
In his autobiography "No Ordinary Joe," the 36-year-old boxer wrote:
"I infuriate him, and he infuriates me."
And the father? "I ignite h im,"
said the Sardinian-Italian Enzo Calzaghe, 58, who
talks fast, walks fast, eats fast and lives so fast he says people ask if he's
on cocaine, and who soon added, "He ignites me."
That day Joe saw a doctor in
On and on, tetchy and narky
and barneys, playing cards thrown against walls after cheating each
other, Enzo storming off so often that if you're lucky he'll give you an
impersonation of himself storming off, Joe boxing beginn
ing at age 8 with Enzo always the trainer. And the upshot?
Joe is 44-0 as a professional. He hasn't lost since the European junior
championships in
He throttled vaunted American Jeff Lacy in 2006, and
They've weathered innumerable phases, even the one where Joe grew a mullet and
adored Whitesnake.
And now, after years in relative secret for want of a globally splashy bout,
after declining an offer to appear on the popular British television show
"Strictly Come Dancing" and another to model underwear, Joe Calzaghe plays Vegas on Saturday night in a splashy
Father and son find a gratefulness in daydreams
realized slowly, the better to sustain the hunger.
Joe repeatedly says and writes of Enzo that, of course, he "loves him to
bits." He employs the term "best pal." Averting the son-fires-father
drill that has visited boxing families such as the Mayweathers,
Mosleys and Joneses, the Calzaghes
have long since surpassed a phase in 2000 when advisors suggested changing
trainers, and Joe pondered it but deemed it misguided.
What's more, neither has strangled the other.
"Even if we had a row yesterday," Joe said, "I'd have to think .
. . what was that about?"
"I'm very crafty," Enzo said with a wink. "I know how to say
sorry. I'm not ashamed to say sorry. I know it's her fault. I know it's Joe's
fault. But I say sorry."
He's been married to Joe's Welsh mother, Jackie, for 38 years and, he said,
"We've been ar guing
for 37. If I brought flowers, she'd think, 'What's wrong? Something's going
on.' "
They welcomed Joe in 1972, and by the early 1980s, Enzo had Joe punching at
rolled-up carpet with a certain, uncommon rapidity.
As this frenzied training approach persisted, some derided it. But Enzo, an
accomplished musician who had traveled
In the quiet of
Joe would exit and "cough up all the dust I'd inhaled."
Finally, six years ago, they moved to a better non-palace, a striking place to
find the world's longest-standing boxing champion. It's in an industrial park,
down some wooden steps the boxers routinely run, next to a rugby pitch.
The sign outside, "Newbridge Boxing Club,"
is beige, hand-painted, black trim. Little piles of trash dot the weedy yard.
At one point, Enzo wrestles with the mulish front door to yank it open.
Indoors, Joe intermittently spits on the floor during a congenial interview in
the room next to the boxing gym. In places, it's just a few notches north of
squalid. The walls do boast posters of the champ, and one of Stallone's "Rocky," but an Observer reporter
spotted a dead mouse floating in a sink, and it's cold and dank in there.
It's also a blast. Enzo chats on, and his brother Sergio stops by, and they prattle in Italian and English and Italian
again. Joe says, "We don't argue as much any more; it's more
chilled-out," and it's compelling to think of two men, through dogged
anonymity, forging to Vegas in this kind of setting.
So after all the tetchiness and barneys, it's probably best to picture
them in the heavy dark of the British winter in February 2006, just before the
landmark mauling of Lacy.
Joe had thought about withdrawing, what with his hands wailing again and more
cortisone injected, and Enzo had used language that cannot appear in this
family newspaper, and sarcastically suggested retirement, but also
realistically stated encouragement.
Somewhere in his skull, Joe knew that Enzo knew something, so in the hushed
Welsh night, Joe would go on 2 a.m. jogs, and with light scarce, Enzo would
follow him in the car, shining the high beams.
And as Joe ran in the patchy snow in the dark, his trainer and father and best
pal would keep the window down, and he would keep hollering, "You are
fitter than you've e ver been, Joe! You will beat
this
http://www.latimes.com/sports/la-sp-boxing18apr18,1,6917042,full.story
The
ANNOTICO Reports Can be Viewed (With Archives*) on:
Blog: www.AnnoticoReport.com
Italia
Italia Mia: www.ItaliaMia.com *
Topix.net:
www.topix.net/world/italy
Annotico
Email: annotico@earthlink.net