GIVING JOE A BIG HAND

OUR columnist continues his look back at his favourite fights... The night Joe Calzaghe did a number on America’s ‘Next Mike Tyson’ saw him completely destroy Jeff Lacy.

But if it wasn’t for a phone call from me, just a week before the fight, then the Welsh warrior may never have stepped into the ring that night in March 2006 at Manchester Arena.

Seven days before the bout the late Enzo Calzaghe called me up to tell me his son had a hand injury.

I immediately thought, ‘Oh no, we are going to have to postpone and he will probably get stripped of his super-middleweight title’.

I’ve always said I don’t want fighters to go into the ring injured. You have to be honest and you can always postpone. But Enzo said to me, ‘Listen, Frank, I think it’s all in his head, can you have a word with him?’.

So I rang Joe up and we had a 40-minute chat. At the start he was whinging about his hand but by the end of it he wanted to get straight in the ring.

I told him that Lacy was made for him and that he only needed one hand to beat him.

The week of the fight all the media didn’t give Calzaghe (inset) a chance against the unbeaten Lacy.

But I knew this would be the night the world finally stood up and took notice of the Welshman.

Calzaghe didn’t just beat Lacy that night, he took him apart.

The American’s corner should have pulled their man out long before it went to the scorecards.

Maybe if they had Lacy would have come back as a real force, but he was never the same again.

Calzaghe became an 11-year sensation overnight and would go on to be Britain’s best fighter since the Second World War.

At the end of the fight I went up to him to say congratulations and I shook his hand, I squeezed it as tight as I could and guess what? He didn’t flinch.