Jermain Taylor (right) dominated Jeff Lacy in Nashville, Tenn., to reestablish himself as a legitmate championship contender. Photo / Fightwireimages.com


Joe Calzaghe fans take comfort: Your man is smiling broadly this morning, as far away from retirement as he can be. He received quite a gift on Saturday night, and no, I don’t mean an offer to fight Bob Foster, the next logical victim in his quest to solidify his "legend killer" credentials.

I mean a victorious Jermain Taylor, whose people are lobbying for a fight with the Welshman based on Taylor’s win Saturday night in Nashville over a moribund Jeff Lacy.

All things seem possible in the celebratory afterglow of an important win, and make no mistake, Taylor’s win was, to him and his supporters, monumentally important.

After a series of desultory performances followed by consecutive losses to Kelly Pavlik, Taylor needed a convincing victory over a recognizable name. He got that with Lacy, but not in any way that should be viewed by reasonable people as a springboard to a fight with Calzaghe.

Not because such a fight wouldn’t be commercially viable, because it would, especially in Wales. There is no end to the pleasure Brits take in watching Calzaghe whip one American after another, and who can blame them? They took it on the chin for 80 or so years. So let them have their fun.

It’s a contest that in terms of its competitiveness would make Calzaghe’s win over Roy Jones look like Ali-Frazier I. It’s simply not an even fight. Guillotine versus neck. Calzaghe ruins Taylor, maybe retires him.

That would give Taylor and Lacy something in common in addition to their long-ago Olympic memories: Calzaghe so destroyed Lacy emotionally that the fighter whose nickname is "Left Hook" now actually throws the left hook about as often as Ricky Hatton frequents tanning booths.

Deep down, it is the belief of most moderately successful people that they are frauds and their worst nightmare is that someone who is not will expose them. Calzaghe did just that to Lacy in a very public way. Few men recover from that kind of blow; clearly Lacy has not and likely never will.

Appearing stumpy and muscle bound, Lacy’s only retort to Taylor’s myriad and maddening technical deficiencies was jab, overhand right, clinch. Repeat. Cinder blocks have more imagination and dimension than Lacy displayed, and it is a decision win over this fighter that inspires a fight with Calzaghe?

If I’m advising Calzaghe, I tell him to sign for a fight with Jermain Taylor, post haste. Bob Foster can wait.

A couple of things occurred to me while I watched HBO’s rebroadcast of the Calzaghe-Jones fight:
The most startling thing about the decline of Roy Jones is not its rapidity or suddenness, though that was startling too, but the seeming ease with which he accepted it. He seemed resigned to it almost immediately. All super heroes devolve into mere mortals eventually, but the very authentic ones fight that degradation until the very end, refusing to accept its dark inevitability. Not Jones. He seemed almost to embrace mediocrity.

Over a relatively short period of time, Jones went from being the best fighter in the world to one who was happy to have lasted the distance and acquitted himself moderately well against Antonio Tarver. In the last round against Calzaghe, he wasn’t trying anymore to win; he wanted it to be over. No one should blame him for that, but we expect more from our super heroes. Admission to the pantheon comes with a price.

About the only fighter in the world who can match Calzaghe’s activity rate is Wayne McCullough, but they’re separated by something like 37 weight classes; there are so many I’ve lost count. So that’s out. But next in line in the punch-rate department is the luckless Glencoffe Johnson, whom Calzaghe has been scheduled to fight several times but pulled out each time with, ahem, injuries. If Calzaghe is not your favorite guy in the world, it might be Johnson you hope gets the next fight. But don’t get your hopes up.

Some miscellaneous observations from last week:
Taylor does no better against Mikkel Kessler than he does against Calzaghe. Kessler remains the class of the 168-pound division, now that Calzaghe has more or less officially moved up.

Now that Nicolay Valuev vs. Evander Holyfield is official, it occurs to me that I consider myself fortunate indeed not to have one of those giant-screen televisions with super-duper high definition capabilities. I can imagine very little as scary as seeing Valuev so close up and in that much detail.
It’s been almost a year since Floyd Mayweather "retired." Is it possible he was serious?
Monte Barrett did exactly as he was supposed to against David Haye, which is to say he fell like stone. Pity. He’ll always have the Tye Fields win to look back on. Now how about Haye against a top-10 guy?

Congratulations to Kermit Cintron for his win over Lovemore N’Dou, which extended his unbeaten streak to any fighter whose last name is not Margarito. Word from Cintron’s camp is that he is almost to the point where he can say Margarito’s name out loud without hyperventilating.

In his last fight, Hasim Rahman essentially capitulated to James Toney, a chubby, 5’10" 40-year old counterpuncher (albeit a marvelously skilled one). What do you think his mindset is going into his fight with the 6-foot-7 chiseled, power-punching Wladimir Klitschko?

William Dettloff can be reached at dettloff@ptd.net