Joe Calzaghe believes he would have destroyed Carl Froch.
Maybe he would have.
Calzaghe had the speed, work rate, adaptability and awkward southpaw style to cause Froch enormous problems. He retired unbeaten at 46-0, unified the super-middleweight division and finished his career by defeating Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr at light-heavyweight.
There is just one fairly important problem whenever we discuss Joe Calzaghe vs Carl Froch.
They never fought.
That sounds ridiculously obvious, but it is precisely why I have always been slightly uncomfortable with the certainty surrounding this particular British boxing argument.
Years after both men retired, we can analyse styles, compare records and argue until closing time about who would have won.
What we cannot do is know.
And when the fight can never happen, everybody gets to win.
Calzaghe Says He Would Have Destroyed Froch
Calzaghe has never been particularly uncertain about how he believes the fight would have gone.
Speaking years after his retirement, he said Froch was the one fight he wished he had taken and argued that his speed would simply have been too much for the Nottingham man. He has previously gone considerably further than predicting a points victory, saying he would have “demolished” Froch.
Fair enough.
What else would we expect an undefeated former world champion to believe?
Froch spent much of his career proving people wrong, so I would equally expect him to believe he could have beaten Calzaghe.
That is the mentality required to reach that level.
The problem comes when opinion gradually becomes accepted as historical fact.
Calzaghe didn’t destroy Froch.
Froch didn’t knock Calzaghe out.
Neither man beat the other because Joe Calzaghe vs Carl Froch never happened.
And there was a point when it could have.
This Wasn’t Always Just a Fantasy Fight
This is what makes the debate different from putting fighters from completely different generations together.
We aren’t discussing Muhammad Ali against Tyson Fury or Sugar Ray Robinson against Canelo Alvarez.
Calzaghe and Froch were active at the same time.
Their careers overlapped.
By the end of 2006, Froch was already ranked among the leading contenders at super-middleweight. By 2007, Calzaghe had comprehensively beaten Mikkel Kessler to establish himself as the outstanding fighter in the division.
Then Calzaghe moved to light-heavyweight.
He defeated Hopkins in April 2008 and later vacated his WBC super-middleweight title rather than face mandatory challenger Froch, freeing himself to pursue what became his final fight against Jones.
That doesn’t automatically mean Calzaghe was frightened of Froch.
There were obvious attractions elsewhere.
Hopkins and Jones were enormous names. America offered Calzaghe the opportunity to add another dimension to his legacy and, inevitably, there were major financial considerations involved.
But I’m going to say something that some Calzaghe supporters will probably hate.
I think Froch played a part in the decision to leave super-middleweight.
Did Joe Calzaghe See Carl Froch as His Biggest Remaining Risk?
This is where Joe Calzaghe vs Carl Froch becomes far more interesting to me than simply arguing about whose hand would have been raised.
I believe Calzaghe knew Froch was probably the one remaining super-middleweight capable of beating him.
Not definitely beating him.
Capable of beating him.
There is an important difference.
Calzaghe had already accomplished virtually everything there was to accomplish at 168lbs. He had dismantled Jeff Lacy, beaten Kessler and established himself as the division’s leading fighter.
So put yourself in his position.
You’re undefeated. You’ve finally received the recognition that perhaps should have arrived years earlier. You’re approaching the end of your career.
One direction takes you to America against established legends such as Hopkins and Jones, with considerably greater international profile and potentially greater financial rewards.
The other keeps you at super-middleweight against a younger, hungry British contender called Carl Froch.
Which is the better business decision?
Obviously America.
But which opponent represented the more uncomfortable sporting risk at that particular stage?
That’s where I think the conversation becomes much less straightforward.
Froch Wasn’t Yet the Froch We Remember
There is, however, an important argument in Calzaghe’s defence.
We know what Froch became.
Calzaghe didn’t.
Froch didn’t win his first world title until December 2008, defeating Jean Pascal for the WBC belt that Calzaghe had vacated. What followed was one of the most extraordinary sequences of opposition any modern British boxer has faced.
Jermain Taylor. Andre Dirrell. Mikkel Kessler. Arthur Abraham. Glen Johnson. Andre Ward. Lucian Bute. Yusaf Mack. Kessler again. George Groves twice.
We now look backwards and see Carl Froch the elite world champion.
Calzaghe was looking across the division and seeing Carl Froch the contender.
Even Calzaghe has subsequently acknowledged that he did not expect Froch to have the career he eventually had.
That matters.
I’m not suggesting Calzaghe sat at home terrified of Froch and immediately decided he needed to escape to another weight division.
That would be ridiculous.
I’m suggesting something far more believable.
Perhaps Calzaghe and those around him looked at the options and realised there was very little to gain and quite a lot to lose.
What Did Calzaghe Have to Gain?
This is one of boxing’s oldest problems.
Risk and reward.
Beat Froch in 2008 and what does history say?
Calzaghe beat an inexperienced contender who hadn’t yet won a world championship.
Lose?
Suddenly the undefeated record disappears, a younger British fighter has taken your crown and the final chapter of your career looks completely different.
Compare that with fighting Hopkins in Las Vegas.
Calzaghe could move up in weight, fight one of the most respected fighters of his generation and establish himself in America.
After winning that fight, he could face another legendary name in Jones at Madison Square Garden.
Financially, commercially and historically, I understand the decision completely.
If I were advising Calzaghe at the time, I might have told him to do exactly the same thing.
But understanding a decision doesn’t mean we can’t question everything behind it.
And I think Froch represented a risk that wasn’t necessarily matched by the reward available for beating him.
Would Carl Froch Actually Have Beaten Joe Calzaghe?
Here comes the bit that might disappoint anyone expecting me to confidently pick Froch.
I don’t know.
Nobody does.
If you forced me to predict Joe Calzaghe vs Carl Froch, I could make an extremely convincing case for Calzaghe.
His hand speed could have caused Froch nightmares.
Calzaghe threw punches in combinations, maintained an exhausting tempo and possessed the ability to change his approach during fights. Froch could sometimes be relatively easy to hit, and against somebody capable of producing Calzaghe’s volume, that creates an obvious route towards a points defeat.
In fact, Froch himself has more recently acknowledged that Calzaghe’s work rate could have led to precisely that outcome unless he managed to stop him.
But then I look at Froch.
The chin.
The physical strength.
The power.
The stubbornness.
The seemingly ridiculous ability to remain dangerous when a fight appeared to be slipping away.
Ask Jermain Taylor how comfortable a lead against Carl Froch could be.
That’s why I refuse to pretend the outcome was inevitable.
Calzaghe might have won.
He might even have won comfortably.
But Froch was precisely the sort of horrible, relentless opponent who could make an ageing champion’s evening considerably more difficult than expected.
We’ll never know.
The Hypothetical Boxer Never Punches Back
This isn’t unique to Joe Calzaghe vs Carl Froch.
Boxing has always had fights that slipped away.
Sometimes promoters couldn’t agree. Sometimes broadcasters stood in the way. Sometimes the money wasn’t right. Sometimes fighters peaked at slightly different moments.
We looked at another version of exactly this problem recently when discussing Manny Pacquiao and Terence Crawford.
Fighters can genuinely want contests that promoters don’t necessarily consider commercially sensible. Opportunities disappear and, eventually, a possible fight becomes an imaginary one.
Then something strange happens.
As the years pass, certainty increases.
The further we get from any realistic possibility of the fight actually happening, the more confidently everybody seems to know what would have happened.
Calzaghe’s supporters can picture him drowning Froch beneath combinations for 12 rounds.
Froch’s supporters can imagine Calzaghe slowing down before the Cobra begins walking through him and eventually landing something enormous.
Both versions can exist forever.
Neither has to survive contact with reality.
The hypothetical boxer never punches back.
An Undefeated Record Changes the Conversation
There is another reason this particular argument refuses to disappear.
46-0.
Calzaghe’s undefeated record has understandably become a huge part of his legacy.
He earned that record.
Nobody gave him those 46 victories.
But undefeated records create a strange mythology in boxing because eventually people begin treating the absence of defeat as proof that defeat was impossible.
It wasn’t.
Every fighter can lose.
Calzaghe could have lost to Froch.
Froch could have lost decisively to Calzaghe.
The fact that one possibility feels more likely to somebody doesn’t turn it into historical fact.
And this is partly why I wonder whether moving to light-heavyweight was even smarter than we normally acknowledge.
Calzaghe finished his career against two enormous names, won both fights and retired unbeaten.
His legacy was secure.
Taking Froch offered something completely different: a dangerous domestic opponent with relatively little international recognition at that stage and plenty to gain from beating him.
Perhaps Calzaghe would have made him look ordinary.
But perhaps he didn’t particularly need to find out.
Joe Calzaghe vs Carl Froch Will Always Be Unanswered
I have enormous respect for Joe Calzaghe.
He is unquestionably one of the greatest fighters Britain has ever produced, and nothing about questioning one career decision changes that.
But I also don’t accept that Joe Calzaghe vs Carl Froch has somehow been settled retrospectively simply because one fighter believes he knows what would have happened.
My suspicion is that Froch represented one of the reasons Calzaghe decided the time was right to leave super-middleweight.
Money mattered.
America mattered.
Legacy mattered.
Hopkins and Jones were bigger names.
All of those things can be true while Calzaghe also recognised that staying at 168lbs meant dealing with a younger, hungry and extremely dangerous Carl Froch.
Maybe Calzaghe would have beaten him.
Maybe he would have dominated him.
Maybe Froch would have produced one of those nights when his chin, power and sheer refusal to go away eventually broke another opponent.
We can argue about it forever.
That’s the beauty — and the frustration — of hypothetical fights.
Everybody gets to win.
And nobody ever has to climb through the ropes and prove it.
What Do You Think?
Would Joe Calzaghe’s speed and work rate have been too much for Carl Froch, or was Froch the dangerous younger challenger who might have taken Calzaghe’s undefeated record?
And do you think Calzaghe’s move to light-heavyweight was purely about bigger opportunities against Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr, or did the emergence of Froch make leaving 168lbs an even easier decision?
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