CALZAGHE vs REID
Elliot Worsell talks to Robin Reid and Joe Calzaghe about their 1999 fight and finds two sharply contrasting memories of events
Twenty years on, the super-middle rivals relive their controversial clash
PERFECT,” they would soon call him. A perfect performance by a perfect fighter whose career record, when the fat lady sang, would signify perfection to the tune of 46 wins and not a single defeat.
Robin Reid, though, wasn’t
buying it.
On March 4, 2006, “The Grim Reaper” lurked inside the Manchester Arena to watch Thomas Mcdonagh and David Barnes, his Collyhurst and Moston gym mates, box on a show headlined by an IBF and WBO world super-middleweight title fight between Joe Calzaghe and Jeff Lacy, two champions with whom he had history. That night, Reid’s focus, despite their familiarity, was not on the headliners but his friends and would remain so because it was easier to cope that way and because being a common opponent was scant consolation for a fighter whose sliding doors moment seven years earlier had left him brooding in the bleachers.
“Part of me wanted him [Calzaghe] to get battered – only because of what happened to me – and another part of me wanted him to prove me right and put on a great performance,” Reid told Boxing News. “It was a weird mix of emotions, but Joe was masterful that night. It was a great performance not because of who he beat – Lacy wasn’t the best – but because of the way he did it. Don’t forget, a lot of people were backing Lacy to win.”
Before Calzaghe lassoed Lacy and took his record to 41-0, Reid was the opponent on whom the Floridian’s mystique and fearsome reputation was built. Retired after seven rounds, having been decked several times, Reid was a tough guy broken, and the result somehow an indication “Left Hook” Lacy was the next “Iron” Mike Tyson. It teed up the hype that followed. It finished Reid as an elite fighter.
Some 20 years ago, however, a better version of Reid, perhaps the best version of Reid, gave Calzaghe, the WBO supermiddleweight champion, all he could handle for 12 rounds at the Telewest Arena in Newcastle on February 13, 1999. The performance shocked many. Reid, at the time, had surrendered his WBC supermiddleweight belt in a “stinker” against Thulani “Sugar Boy” Malinga and been inactive for almost a year. Rather than Calzaghe’s equal, Reid was expected to be ready-made.
“I wouldn’t say it was a Nigel Benn and Chris Eubank type of rivalry – it wasn’t as big as that – but we were two big names and it was a big rivalry for the Sky Sports generation,” ➤
PART OF ME WANTED CALZAGHE TO GET BATTERED BY JEFF LACY”
I WAS VERY VULNERABLE REALLY. I WAS JUST TAKING FIGHTS BECAUSE I HAD TO PAY THE BILLS”
the Runcorn man said of a clash significant enough to land on Sky Box Office (as part of a double-header that also included Oscar De La Hoya-ike Quartey from Las Vegas). “Calzaghe was the young up-andcomer, he’d just beaten Eubank, and he was the one everybody wanted to win,” Reid contined.
“At the press conference before the fight, Frank Warren raised Calzaghe’s hand and said, ‘This is my man for the millennium.’ I remember sitting there feeling like I’d been left out. He had an interest in both of us but was already announcing his favourite. It wounded me more than anything Calzaghe would say about me.”
They were both handsome fighters, Calzaghe and Reid, unusually so given the nature of their profession, but it was Calzaghe who zeroed in on Reid’s wellgroomed appearance and claimed he would make him ugly in the ring.
“There was a bit of needle at the time but now, when I look back, there wasn’t really any proper needle – at least on my part,” Calzaghe told
BN. “We could both be a bit brash and cocky and we were just trying to build up the fight. I’ve never really had any bad feeling towards him, though.”
According to the late Enzo Calzaghe, a few of his son’s Reid-shaped headaches could be attributed to bad preparation. Hand injuries, for example, the scourge of the Welshman’s career, limited the amount of sparring he was able to do before the fight, and his weight, too, ended up being an issue. Seven pounds overweight on the day of the weigh-in, Calzaghe made the 168-pound limit “by the skin of his teeth” using methods his father would never normally condone.
“It was really bad,” confirmed Joe. “After the Eubank fight, I had a serious elbow injury. I couldn’t extend my elbow and couldn’t spar. That really affected my timing and everything else. I had the [Juan Carlos] Gimenez fight, the [David] Starie fight and the Robin Reid fight and that was a bad time for me. I was probably operating at only 60 per cent for those fights. I was very vulnerable really. I was just taking fights because I had to pay the bills. I had to go to work – I had a young family – even when I wasn’t fit.” Reid wasn’t to know, nor was it any of his concern. Oblivious, he grafted hard with trainers Brian Hughes and Pat Barrett, focused only on himself, did his homework, and created a game plan to try and compound Calzaghe’s misery.
“Calzaghe was going to come out like a bull in a china shop because he was fit and fast,” Reid explained. “I’m not going to say I was slow, but one of my negatives was certainly my lack of combinations. I’m not a 10-punch combination man and couldn’t match Calzaghe in that department. I’m economical with what I do whereas Joe is very overwhelming. We knew he intended to make an early impression. He said he’d knock me out in four rounds and that was subconsciously in his head. As a result, we expected him to up his game in the first four rounds. We decided to let him.”
Reid insists the fight ended up being easier than he
REID GOT HIS TACTICS RIGHT. THE RIGHT HAND OVER THE TOP, I FELL FOR THAT A FEW TIMES”
had anticipated. It was easier to survive the Calzaghe onslaught and easier to then find the champion’s sweet spot with his counter right hand, the accuracy of which increased as the bout progressed.
“We knew he’d be at his most dangerous for the first four rounds and then settle,” Reid said. “That’s what he did. It might look like I’m not doing much early but I’m defending well and not a lot is getting through. He was throwing a lot, but not catching me clean.
“I probably won one of the first four rounds but from round five onwards I let my right hand go more and more and it started to land. Calzaghe got ragged and reckless after his initial burst and that allowed me to find holes in his defence. I’m not saying I went right-hand-happy after that, but it was a shot that brought me a lot of success. It was always there.”
Calzaghe, of course, has his own theory on why his grip on the contest slipped after the opening third.
“I damaged my left hand in the fourth round,” he said. “I was quite comfortable up until that point. You’ve got to give Reid credit, though. He fought a good fight. He caught me with some big right hands, and I was making some stupid mistakes. He fought well but I performed nowhere near my best.”
In the end, to a mixed reception from 12,000 fans inside the Telewest Arena, two of the three judges’ scorecards read 116-111 in favour of Calzaghe, while one rebellious vote of 116-111 went the way of Reid. They suggested quantity ruled quality and that the numbers – Calzaghe outworked Reid in many of the rounds – didn’t lie. The verdict also set Calzaghe’s career on one trajectory – up and up in pursuit of perfection – and Reid’s on a vastly different one.
“I’ve watched the fight back many different ways,” said Reid.
“I’ve watched it from my perspective, watching what I do, and I’ve watched it from his perspective, watching everything he does. I’ve also watched it as a neutral, looking at both boxers and taking the action as it comes.
“To me, those big right hands thrown three or four times a round, and landing, did more damage and were bigger moments than anything Calzaghe produced in those same rounds. Yeah, he might have been throwing lots and looking busy, but he wasn’t scoring the way I was after those first four rounds.
“I think I won that fight by two clear rounds, and that’s not just me being a bitter, old fighter. A lot of other people think I won that fight, too.” Suffice to say, Joe Calzaghe isn’t one of them. “When they announced it as a split-decision, it did make me nervous,” he confessed. “Reid thinks he won by two, but I thought I won it by four or five rounds.
“He caught me with some decent punches but never hurt or rocked me. It was all just single punches really. He nicked a few rounds but that was it.
“It obviously wasn’t a win like the Jeff Lacy one. It wasn’t a domination. Reid got his tactics right and the best punch to use against a southpaw is the right hand over the top and Reid had a good one. I fell for that trick a few times. But when you don’t spar, you don’t see punches coming.
“Had my preparation been right, and had I done some sparring, I would have had better timing and my defence would have been tighter. I was a lot more skilful than I showed in that fight.
“In a way, I’m very proud. It’s not a great performance, no, but given everything I had to go through, I’m pleased with the win. Robin Reid was a former world champion, an Olympic medallist and a quality fighter.”
In round 11 of the fight, Sky Sports commentator Ian Darke, sensing it was too close to call, went so far as to suggest, “The word rematch is already beginning to flash through my mind.” He spoke for everyone watching in the arena and everyone watching at home. He spoke for Reid, too, this challenger on the painful end of a split-decision soon to find himself showered with sympathy and betterluck-next-time encouragement.
“What are you going to do now, Rob?” Ricky Hatton asked him one day. “Do you want the rematch?” “Of course,” said Reid. “I bet you got weighed in for the first one, didn’t you?” “How much do you think I got, Ricky?” Hatton paused for a moment. “That’s a 500-grand fight that, isn’t it?” Reid shook his head.
“It was on Sky Box Office, wasn’t it?” Reid nodded. “Three-hundred grand?” Reid suspected Hatton was pocketing between £300,000 and £400,000 for defending his lightly-regarded WBU lightwelterweight title at the time. “Not even close,” he said. “One-hundred-and-fifty grand?” “No, Ricky,” said Reid, exhausted by the guessing game. “I got 75-grand, mate.” The amount he claims he recieved ultimately amounted to a lot less.
“That figure then got ripped apart by manager’s fees, trainer’s fees, board tax and world title tax, and then your own tax on top of it,” Reid explained. “I ended up fighting Joe Calzaghe for about 20-grand. Even back in the 90s that wasn’t great money for a big fight on a pay-per-view at a big arena. But, when you look at the money thrown around today, it does make you a bit sick.”
That said, the day promoter Frank Warren invited Reid to join him for dinner at The Savoy, months after the Calzaghe loss, the scorned challenger was overflowing with optimism. He prepared his smartest suit and travelled to London convinced he would return a wealthy man.
“I could barely contain myself,” Reid said. “I was bracing myself for half-a-million quid...” Reid paused for dramatic effect. He slapped the palm of his hand against his forehead. What he was offered was nothing like half-a-million quid. Reid can laugh about it now. “The funny thing is, I had it in my head that I was going to take no less than 250-grand. I said, ‘No, I can’t do it for that, Frank,’ and that was the end of it.”
IT BLEW MY MIND. JOE’S OWN FLESH AND BLOOD SAYING I’M HER FAVOURITE FIGHTER, THAT I WAS UNLUCKY AGAINST HIM”
It really was, too. Calzaghe would go on to leave his mark as a peerless super-middleweight champion before winning the lineal title at light-heavyweight and retiring in 2008 with a perfect 46-0 (32) record.
He is often asked about the night he ran rings around Jeff Lacy, and the night he scored an early knockdown only to survive a late onslaught against Chris Eubank to win his first world title, and the night he edged Bernard Hopkins at light-heavyweight, but rarely does he have to entertain questions about Robin Reid and the night he came closest to losing; the night his zero was under threat.
“It’s in the past now and I don’t really think about it or have much to say about it,” said Calzaghe, whose tone when asked about Reid is that of a man urged to dredge up memories of a toxic marriage and an ex he would rather forget.
“When I think about my fights, I never really think or talk about that fight. He was a former champion who had just lost his title. It would have been a bigger fight if he had kept that title and we had fought in a unification. I was actually quite annoyed we didn’t fight when he was champion. But that tends to happen in boxing, doesn’t it? You fight them when they’ve lost their belt and have nothing to lose and everything to gain. That was very frustrating for me.”
As for the rematch, Reid chased and chased but to no avail. He would fight for third-rate versions of the super-middleweight crown (WBU, WBF and IBO), legitimise some of the BBC cards on which Audley Harrison appeared, he was once paid £25,000 to defend his WBF belt against Julio César Vásquez, and was robbed beyond dispute when he challenged Germany’s Sven Ottke for the WBA and IBF supermiddleweight titles in 2003. That loss particularly hurt, for Reid knew winning the WBA and IBF belts would have been his ticket to a rematch he so desperately craved.
“Our fight is always swept under the carpet when people talk about Calzaghe’s career,” said Reid, now 48. “Let’s say Sky Sports do a Calzaghe special, I guarantee very little mention is given to my fight with him. I’m not saying it was a blatant robbery, because it wasn’t, but the result doesn’t look good on his record.
“Also, if you bring up our fight, and mention how close and controversial it was, people want to know why the rematch never happened to sort it out once and for all. The people who watched it at the time know the score, but younger fans who see Calzaghe as this unbeatable hero might not be aware that he had the odd tough fight early on in his career. And he may have even lost one.
“Whenever the question of the rematch was put to Joe, he’d always say, ‘What’s the point? I’ve just beaten him. He brings nothing to the table.’ But if the roles had been reversed, I wouldn’t have been happy with people saying I got beat or got a dodgy decision. That would have eaten me up. I’d want to fight the guy again and do a proper number on him.” “I was looking for bigger and better things,” argued Calzaghe, 46. “I don’t think Robin Reid deserved the opportunity. You only have to look at what I went on to achieve afterwards to see we were on different levels. No disrespect to Robin Reid, but I went on to unify the titles and fight better fighters than him. As time went on, you could see the difference.” Two decades on, Reid says he is at peace with losing to a “British boxing great” and insists there is no animosity between the pair despite the contentious nature of their fight. Calzaghe, he said, apologised for the comments he made about spoiling Reid’s good looks when they convened at The Midland hotel in Manchester on the eve of Calzaghe’s January 2000 fight with David Starie. Then, at a WBC convention in Cardiff years later, the two were joking around like old friends. “Are you still going on about that fight?” Calzaghe asked Reid that day. “Too bloody right,” said Reid, who retired in 2012 with a 42-8-1 (29) pro record. “You were lucky, man.” Back in Manchester, “The Grim Reaper” rose from his seat during the Calzaghe vs. Lacy undercard and attempted to slalom around the inebriated and locate one of the arena toilets. En route, Reid, marching beside Matthew Hall, his gym mate, spotted three women approach from a distance, one of whom wore a gold dress, played with her dark hair and seemed keen to reach him before the others. “I started to wobble a bit,” he remembered. “My front went.” What followed, though, was an innocent request. The woman in gold asked for a photograph with Reid and revealed, to his delight, he was her favourite fighter. “You fought my brother,” she said. “Are you sure?” replied Reid. “Yeah, I’m sure. You fought Joe.” Hitting play on a slideshow, Reid cast his mind back to a time when he was a 12-yearold amateur boxer and attempted to recall every Joe he had encountered on his way to an Olympic bronze medal in ‘92. “Joe who?” he eventually asked, conceding he was
stumped. “Calzaghe,” she said. “It blew my mind,” Reid would admit years later. “That’s Joe’s own flesh and blood saying I’m her favourite fighter and that I was unlucky against him. It was nice to hear, but it’s bittersweet because it doesn’t change anything. I didn’t get the decision, I didn’t get the belt and I didn’t get much money, either.”
It did, however, make what was to come – the small matter of Joe Calzaghe producing a punch-perfect display against Jeff Lacy – far easier to stomach for a man convinced he once proved a perfect fighter was as imperfect as the rest.