NEWPORT, Wales (AP)—Joe Calzaghe has no interest in coming out of retirement to fight Carl Froch, saying the WBA super middleweight champion is not in the same class.
The 37-year-old Welshman retired in February after winning all 46 of his fights and said that he had no interest in facing Froch, who knocked out Jermain Taylor with 14 seconds left in their fight Saturday night in Mashantucket, Conn.
“Enough is enough with Carl Froch calling me out,” Calzaghe told the South Wales Argus. “I can tell you categorically that I will not fight the guy even if I did come out of retirement, which I am not going to do.”
Froch called on Calzaghe to return to the ring after beating Taylor, even though he trailed most of the fight. But Calzaghe, who won his last two fights at 175 pounds against former world champions Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jr., said the English fighter was not good enough to lure him from retirement.
“I am sick to death of him drumming up free publicity for himself by using my name,” Calzaghe said. “No one who watched the fight can believe he’s in my class. He’s my stalker.
“For the first eight rounds against Taylor he was like a goalkeeper with no defense. He was being outclassed and outfought by a middleweight who’s seen better days.”
Tuesday, April 28, 2009
And now, Mike Tyson the movie!
By TIM DAHLBERG, AP Sports Columnist
If anyone needed to be reminded about the danger in boxing, the death Monday of former heavyweight champion Greg Page illustrated it in a terribly sad way. Page went quietly at the age of 50, having never really recovered from a fight eight years ago that was to be his last.
Boxing, as Mike Tyson used to always tell us, is a hurt business. Tragically, it sometimes becomes even more than that.
But it can also deliver us some of the most compelling athletes of the time. And if anyone needs to be reminded of that, well, go and watch the new Tyson documentary that made its debut on the big screen over the weekend.
It’s Tyson unplugged, and it’s supposed to be good. Very good, if you believe several credible reviewers who were taken with how disarming, candid, and even vulnerable the former baddest man on the planet now appears to be.
I can’t say, because I haven’t seen it. Probably won’t, either, but don’t let that stop you.
I won’t see it because I’ve seen it all before. For the better part of 25 years I’ve watched as Tyson swerved from one train wreck to another until, finally, his star burned out and he retreated into retirement with little left to show for his career other than one very strange tattoo on his face.
Little did I know that one day he would have a movie where it would all be condensed into 88 minutes. Could have saved myself a lot of time and grief by simply waiting for the DVD.
Actually, the surprising thing isn’t that Tyson has a movie out. From the time he began knocking fighters out for a living in 1984 until his final fight he’s provided enough material for 10 movies.
No, the surprising—make that shocking—thing is that at the age of 43 he’s still alive and, seemingly, well. For a long time it looked like he would never make 40, something Tyson himself admits having never expected.
He’s surprisingly intact, too, if you can get past the tattoo and the weathered look that all boxers have. Though Tyson has always had a speech impediment, he shows no signs of any damage from getting hit too much in the ring when he talks and gives no indication that all the drugs and alcohol robbed him of too many brain cells.
He survived one prison term and a couple of other jail sentences without being harmed, and a lot of long nights in strip clubs without getting knifed by someone trying to put a notch on their belt. The strip clubs were where I always thought he would meet his end, or else in the bedroom of someone else’s wife.
He claims to be behaving and that’s good, because he’s still on probation from his guilty plea for possessing cocaine in Arizona, where he was staring at a long prison sentence. Tyson hasn’t had a lot of luck in the courts over the years, but he finally ran into a judge who believed him when he said he took responsibility for his mistakes.
Whether moviegoers believe what Tyson has to say is up to them. I did find over the years that Tyson would usually say what he believed, unless, of course, he was trying to con people into buying tickets for fights even he was no longer interested in.
Whether anyone still cares is another matter. For many years people couldn’t get enough of this larger-than-life figure, but the more time passes the more people like Tyson become yesterday’s news. And documentaries are a particularly tough sell, as noted by the fact that the movie grossed just $86,000 in 11 theaters over the weekend.
Tyson was once a great heavyweight, but his greatness didn’t last long. After losing the heavyweight title in a shocking knockout to James “Buster” Douglas in Tokyo in 1990, his heyday was over. He could still make money and make headlines, but largely he just went through the motions in the ring and his record reflected it.
The reviewers who praised the new movie wrote about how tormented of a soul Tyson seems to be and how conflicted he remains with his life. They express surprise that he can quote philosophers, and seem astonished that this high school dropout with such a troubled past is more intelligent than they might have thought.
I don’t because I’ve been listening to him from the time I found him crying outside of Caesars Palace after losing a bid for the 1984 Olympic team. Along the way I’ve listened to long hours of the same kind of stream of consciousness talk that is the core of the movie.
Some of it was fascinating, some just odd. Tyson could be charming and revolting in the same breath, and part of the fun was that you never knew what he would say next.
He’s still that way, which should make for a good movie.
And who would have ever thought you could see Iron Mike for just 10 bucks?
Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg@ap.org
If anyone needed to be reminded about the danger in boxing, the death Monday of former heavyweight champion Greg Page illustrated it in a terribly sad way. Page went quietly at the age of 50, having never really recovered from a fight eight years ago that was to be his last.
Boxing, as Mike Tyson used to always tell us, is a hurt business. Tragically, it sometimes becomes even more than that.
But it can also deliver us some of the most compelling athletes of the time. And if anyone needs to be reminded of that, well, go and watch the new Tyson documentary that made its debut on the big screen over the weekend.
It’s Tyson unplugged, and it’s supposed to be good. Very good, if you believe several credible reviewers who were taken with how disarming, candid, and even vulnerable the former baddest man on the planet now appears to be.
I can’t say, because I haven’t seen it. Probably won’t, either, but don’t let that stop you.
I won’t see it because I’ve seen it all before. For the better part of 25 years I’ve watched as Tyson swerved from one train wreck to another until, finally, his star burned out and he retreated into retirement with little left to show for his career other than one very strange tattoo on his face.
Little did I know that one day he would have a movie where it would all be condensed into 88 minutes. Could have saved myself a lot of time and grief by simply waiting for the DVD.
Actually, the surprising thing isn’t that Tyson has a movie out. From the time he began knocking fighters out for a living in 1984 until his final fight he’s provided enough material for 10 movies.
No, the surprising—make that shocking—thing is that at the age of 43 he’s still alive and, seemingly, well. For a long time it looked like he would never make 40, something Tyson himself admits having never expected.
He’s surprisingly intact, too, if you can get past the tattoo and the weathered look that all boxers have. Though Tyson has always had a speech impediment, he shows no signs of any damage from getting hit too much in the ring when he talks and gives no indication that all the drugs and alcohol robbed him of too many brain cells.
He survived one prison term and a couple of other jail sentences without being harmed, and a lot of long nights in strip clubs without getting knifed by someone trying to put a notch on their belt. The strip clubs were where I always thought he would meet his end, or else in the bedroom of someone else’s wife.
He claims to be behaving and that’s good, because he’s still on probation from his guilty plea for possessing cocaine in Arizona, where he was staring at a long prison sentence. Tyson hasn’t had a lot of luck in the courts over the years, but he finally ran into a judge who believed him when he said he took responsibility for his mistakes.
Whether moviegoers believe what Tyson has to say is up to them. I did find over the years that Tyson would usually say what he believed, unless, of course, he was trying to con people into buying tickets for fights even he was no longer interested in.
Whether anyone still cares is another matter. For many years people couldn’t get enough of this larger-than-life figure, but the more time passes the more people like Tyson become yesterday’s news. And documentaries are a particularly tough sell, as noted by the fact that the movie grossed just $86,000 in 11 theaters over the weekend.
Tyson was once a great heavyweight, but his greatness didn’t last long. After losing the heavyweight title in a shocking knockout to James “Buster” Douglas in Tokyo in 1990, his heyday was over. He could still make money and make headlines, but largely he just went through the motions in the ring and his record reflected it.
The reviewers who praised the new movie wrote about how tormented of a soul Tyson seems to be and how conflicted he remains with his life. They express surprise that he can quote philosophers, and seem astonished that this high school dropout with such a troubled past is more intelligent than they might have thought.
I don’t because I’ve been listening to him from the time I found him crying outside of Caesars Palace after losing a bid for the 1984 Olympic team. Along the way I’ve listened to long hours of the same kind of stream of consciousness talk that is the core of the movie.
Some of it was fascinating, some just odd. Tyson could be charming and revolting in the same breath, and part of the fun was that you never knew what he would say next.
He’s still that way, which should make for a good movie.
And who would have ever thought you could see Iron Mike for just 10 bucks?
Tim Dahlberg is a national sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at tdahlberg@ap.org
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