Twenty years ago, Joe Calzaghe produced arguably the finest performance of his career, and arguably the finest performance seen in a British ring, to befuddle and ultimately beat Jeff “Left Hook” Lacy in Manchester, England.
Thirteen years ago, when I asked Calzaghe to reflect on that win, he remained proud of his achievement and his performance, though questioned how both the fight and the win would age. He knew as well as anyone how time can either act favourably for a fighter or instead apply a fresh layer of context which has us all rethinking what we once saw and celebrated.
In the case of Calzaghe and Lacy, the seven years that had passed between the fight happening and Calzaghe reflecting on its legacy had not been kind. In that time Calzaghe had of course only furthered his own legacy – which is, to him, all that really counts – yet the same could not be said for Jeff Lacy. He, in fact, was never more popular and revered than he was the night he walked to the ring to face Calzaghe in Manchester. After that, it was mostly downhill for the heavy-handed slugger from Florida. Never again did he fight for a world title, let alone win one, and seldom will people offer Lacy’s name when asked to identify the best opponent Calzaghe conquered in his Hall-of-Fame career.
“It's a shame Lacy didn’t do much after our fight, but at the time he was undefeated, an Olympic medallist, and destroying everybody in his path,” Calzaghe reminded me. “Well, I annihilated that guy and I did it live on ITV in front of millions. It was the best performance of my career and one that will, I hope, be remembered for years. When you put it like that, it doesn’t really matter what Jeff Lacy did or didn’t go on to achieve after our fight. I destroyed the guy not only physically but also mentally, and took everything away from him. Fair play to him for even trying to come back from it.”
Twelve hours ago, approx., marked the 20th anniversary of Calzaghe’s fight with Lacy, not that many would have known. It has, for whatever reason, been given very little attention or fanfare this time around. Whether that’s because everything that can be said about the fight has already been said (perhaps for the 10th anniversary) or because the fight does not mean the same thing in 2026 as it meant in 2006 is up for debate. But it is certainly a curious phenomenon, that 2006 fight between Calzaghe and Lacy.
At the time, of course, we all felt it was legacy-defining for Calzaghe – both the performance and the result – yet sometimes a moment is just that. It is fleeting, it is of its time, and it depreciates in value the second it ends. Rest assured, nobody in 2006 would have believed that 20 years after the fact we would greet Calzaghe’s career-best performance with a collective shrug; or worse, a question: “Who was Jeff Lacy again?”
If in need of a reminder, allow me. Jeff Lacy, although merely a name on a list now, was in 2006 one of the scariest super-middleweights on the planet. His shoulders alone were bigger than most people’s heads and his ability to end fights inside the distance, often via his left hook, had plenty preferring his championship reign, however brief, to Calzaghe’s. He was, to the untrained eye, more dynamic, more exciting, and more likely to one day become a superstar in the sport. Even if Calzaghe, the older man by five years, had been defending his title for a much longer time, experience becomes negligible when hype comes along. With Lacy, there was a great deal of that, make no mistake. In fact, by the time the fight was upon us, at 2am local time on March 5, he was viewed as the slight favourite. Moreover, the fight itself was by then deemed not so much a unification – Lacy’s IBF title, Calzaghe’s WBO title – as a changing of the guard.
“Lacy was the favourite and came with a big reputation,” Calzaghe said. “He was knocking people over left, right and centre, and people were trying to make him out to be some kind of Mike Tyson-type figure. He was supposed to be fearsome.
“They called him a monster and a huge puncher, but I never took any notice of it really. Whenever I watched him on tape, which wasn’t very often, he looked slow. I couldn’t get past how slow his feet were. That stuck out every time I watched him.
“Also, I trusted my own ability, and I knew that I would raise my game when the time came to do so. If they matched me with a tough opponent, someone who might even be a favourite against me, I knew I’d rise to the occasion.
“So, rather than being fearful, I was excited. I liked the opportunity to test myself at the very top level and I also liked what I saw on tape. If you look back, I broke my hand in the previous fight [against Evans Ashira] and still won it one-handed. It was easy for me. If anything, I’d gone a bit stale and needed a kick up the arse. The Lacy fight provided that. But it also provided me with an opponent I knew I could look good against.”
Calzaghe never lacked confidence going into the Lacy fight, but that is not to say he was immune to doubt. There were too many niggling injuries and too many people on the outside expressing their own doubt for Calzaghe to complete his training camp entirely convinced he was doing the right thing by going through with the fight. He had no fear of Lacy, it wasn’t that. But Calzaghe was, for perhaps the first time, starting to doubt both himself and his ability to produce his best form on the night.
“I nearly pulled out of the fight because of a hand injury,” he said. “I told my dad [Enzo, also Joe’s trainer], and said, ‘Look, this guy has been knocking everybody out and I can’t fight him with one hand.’ Dad says it's very, very simple. He said, ‘Listen, mate, this guy is made for you, and this fight is going to make your life. You need to fight. He said this guy has to move five times to throw one punch. All you’ve got to do is throw five punches and move once.’
“It was so simple, but it made complete sense to me, and it made me believe I could win the fight with very little difficulty. I knew that all I had to do was use the time it took for him to load up on punches – his five moves – to get off with five punches of my own and then move once to avoid his response. Suddenly I could see the fight playing out in my mind and there was no way I was pulling out.
“At first, I said, ‘What are you talking about? It’s never going to be that easy.’ But he assured me it would be that easy. And he was right; he was spot on. This guy, my dad, who’d never boxed before, had figured something out that every so-called boxing expert had apparently missed. They all seemed to think I’d get knocked out. They didn’t have a fucking clue.”
Soon into the fight many at ringside were saying similar things about Lacy, for he too cut a clueless figure in the company of Calzaghe. Everything Lacy tried, Calzaghe had an answer for, and no amount of huffing and puffing and swinging with that fearsome left hook of his could turn the tide in the American’s favour. Instead, the more he missed, the more Calzaghe grew in both stature and confidence. The more he presented his body and head as a target, the easier it was for Calzaghe to then forget about the fact his hands, these weapons with which he was battering Lacy, were themselves in poor condition.
“If you look at it, that fight was clearly my best performance,” said Calzaghe, who claimed a unanimous decision (119-107, 119-107, 119-105) at the bout’s conclusion. “I couldn’t have fought a more perfect fight that night. Everything went to plan. My defence was good, my offence was obviously good – Jeff can probably tell you that – and it all just connected nicely. Sometimes you get nights like that, and sometimes you have to try and gut it out. It was just great to get a night when everybody’s picking against you and when everybody’s trying to make your opponent out to be something he was not. That’s what makes a night like that really special.
“Funnily enough, when I watched the Showtime version of the fight for the first time, I got the sense that the commentators saw me as just the opponent. It was almost as if I had no right sharing the ring with Lacy. They didn’t respect my credentials and they didn’t even know if I could fight or not. It was quite funny watching the ring-walks back, knowing what happened a few minutes later. Even the change in attitude is amusing. They almost mark the first round down as a bit of a fluke – half expecting Lacy to put it right in the next one – and then by round four you can sense the worry and confusion in their voices. By the second half of the fight, they have realised what I knew for ages: I can fight, man.”
Since beating Jeff Lacy so impressively in 2006, that has never really been in doubt. Yet still it is nice to remind yourself of that fact from time to time, especially when time itself threatens to diminish what should never be diminished.
