NEW YORK -- The powers that be have modestly billed Saturday's little get-together at Madison Square Garden as the "Battle of the Superpowers: Worlds Will Collide," although almost everyone, including the superpowers themselves, seems to agree boxing might have been better served had these particular worlds collided eight or 10 years earlier.
But in those days, you couldn't have gotten Joe Calzaghe out of Cardiff, at the point of a gun, and Roy Jones Jr. was so determined to retain his tripartite claim to the world's light heavyweight titles that he spent years fighting a seemingly endless supply of mandatory challengers until he finally decided to challenge himself -- and when he did, the opponent was not the undefeated Calzaghe, but rather then-heavyweight titlist John Ruiz.
Ask either man, and he'll tell you how much he wanted to fight the other back then, but the fact remains that while the Welshman was defending against the likes of Rick Thornberry, Richie Woodhall, Will McIntyre and Tocker Pudwill without ever leaving the British Isles, Jones was doing the same thing by saddling HBO with his fights against Richard Frazier, David Telesco and Richard Hall.
"Of course, if they'd fought then, there wouldn't have been the kind of money they're making now," said Alton Merkerson, who has trained Jones since his amateur days. "Roy was willing, but Calzaghe wouldn't come over here to fight him."
The fact remains that even as he talked the talk, Jones was every bit as much the homebody as Calzaghe, spurning lucrative offers to fight Steve Collins in Dublin (instead, he faced Tony Thornton in his hometown of Pensacola) and Dariusz Michalczewski in Germany (instead fighting Glen Kelly in Miami).
Saturday's bout will be Jones' 57th as a pro, and he hasn't had a single fight outside the United States since the 1988 Seoul Olympics, where he came controversially short of a gold medal.
Meanwhile, Calzaghe addressed the delay at Wednesday's New York news conference, saying, "They accused me of hiding behind my belts, but believe me, I wasn't."
Calzaghe admitted he wasn't exactly consumed by thoughts of moving up to fight Jones but said he did badly want to legitimize his claim as the world's top super middleweight by consolidating the titles.
"I was struggling along, fighting in small arenas and getting no respect. It took literally years, until the Jeff Lacy fight [in 2006], before I was finally able to do it," Calzaghe said. "Everything seemed to have changed with that fight, but then my next two opponents [Sakio Bika and Peter Manfredo] were guys I didn't even want to fight. I seemed to have lost all the momentum I'd gained in the Lacy fight, so I finally went to my promoter and told him I wanted to fight Mikkel Kessler and nobody else."
Facing the unbeaten Kessler over the objections of promoter Frank Warren, Calzaghe added the WBA and WBC titles (he had by then already been relieved of the IBF version he had won from Lacy), Then, earlier this year, he ventured across the Atlantic for the first time and, fighting as a light heavyweight, defeated Bernard Hopkins. Immediately after that April fight last he was approached by Jones, who said, in essence, "Let's do it."
Then, earlier this year, Calzaghe ventured across the Atlantic for the first time and, fighting as a light heavyweight, defeated Bernard Hopkins.
It was immediately after the Hopkins fight on April 19 that Jones approached Calzaghe and said, in essence, "Let's do it."
"Joe has been accused of picking his fights," said Enzo Calzaghe, the boxer's father and trainer. "But it was Joe came to me, and he said, 'I want to fight Roy Jones, I want to fight him in America and I want to fight at Madison Square Garden.'"
Jones was fresh off his January win over Felix Trinidad, which capped a three-fight redemptive streak that followed a disastrous string of three ugly losses in 2004 and '05 that appeared to signal the end of his competitive career.
When Jones followed back-to-back knockout losses to Antonio Tarver and Glen Johnson with a points loss to Tarver, Calzaghe said, "Everyone seemed to write him off. I know I did."
"Yeah, but I made up for it with three straight wins," Jones recalled with a grin. "I beat a big guy [6-footer Prince Ajamu], I beat a little guy [Trinidad] and I beat an undefeated guy [Anthony Hanshaw]."
The negotiations that began in Las Vegas right after the Hopkins fight continued over the next few months and were conducted almost exclusively by cell phone. In fact, Calzaghe and Jones reached their final agreement with a series of text messages. By the time they were ready to announce the bout, Calzaghe had jettisoned Warren, and Saturday's fight is being jointly promoted by the fighters themselves.
Calzaghe is 36, Jones pushing 40, and neither man any longer owns a recognized world title, but say what you will about the Ring belt (and our preference would be to say as little about it as possible), at least the man who walks away with it Saturday night won't face any mandatory obligations.
Although Calzaghe conceded Wednesday, "I've made it no secret that this will probably be my last fight," he added that he would make no hard and fast decisions about his future until afterward.
Meanwhile, consider this: Calzaghe did his own negotiating -- and the contract calls for a rematch in Wales should he lose.
"But we didn't come this far just to f--- it up now," Enzo Calzaghe said.
Oddly, Jones, who has been talking retirement for at least 10 years, isn't waffling at all this time around.
"No matter what happens, this is definitely not my last fight," he said.
One possibility is Hopkins, who has been spoiling for a rematch with Jones for the past 15 years and who enhanced his own credibility with his stunning domination of Kelly Pavlik in Atlantic City three weeks ago. He undoubtedly will be praying for a Jones win Saturday.
"I'm sure he will be, and Bernard is definitely a possibility," Jones said with a twinkle in his eye. "But so is a fight at Millennium Stadium [in Wales]."
The rematch clause, of course, kicks in only with a Calzaghe loss. Jones sounds as if he's counting on it.
