More than that, he was a huge risk to the 'bigger names', who weren't queueing up to face the risk of fighting an unbeaten boxer from Wales. Remember that a fight had been arranged with Hopkins many years ago, only for Hopkins to try and double the fee on the eve of the fight. That doesn't exactly speak of Hopkins being keen to fight the risky Welshman.
In this era of multiple belts and political shenanigans Calzaghe did the best anyone could have really expected. Haye's made a bigger splash largely because the heavyweight division is so moribund now.
It's entirely fair to say that the other top fighters weren't madly keen on fighting Calzaghe, who seemed for much of his career to be a high risk low reward fight to take. But it's rather one-eyed to assume that Calzaghe and the people around him were blameless in this. Boxing is a business and Calzaghe was bringing in a huge amount of cash fighting weaker boxers at home for more than a decade.
There was, as there often is, a coincidence of interest between Calzaghe, Jones, Hopkins, Ottke etc. These fighters - or the people around them - simply didn't want any part of each other and taken together there was a grand total of one fight between any of them at anything close to their peaks. It's all rather a long way from the Hearns, Hagler, Duran and Leonard era - boxers who were probably more talented than the more recent crop but who made sure that they will all be remembered as greater than any of the later group.
The fact is that between fighting a rather shopworn Chris Eubank and taking on Jeff Lacey, Calzaghe stayed at home and spent ten years beating up relatively low risk fighters. Not all of these fighters were bad. Some were legitimate contenders. But instead of fighting a load of decent fringe contenders and a few top names, Calzaghe for many years fought a load of nobodies and a few decent contenders.
That isn't much to build a legacy on and Calzghe will be remembered as a great talent who used that talent cleverly and safely and only really tested himself at the end of his career. The fact is that five fights against high quality opponents, three of whom were past their best, is much less than his talent deserved.
I don't really blame Calzaghe for that, or any of the other boxers I mentioned. Boxing is a dangerous game and boxers have short careers (Bernard Hopkins excepted!). You'd have to be very brave or very foolish to take unnecessary risks. At the end of his career, his money well and truly made, Calzaghe did step up his competition and start to fight the best available. The best available weren't as good as they were earlier in his career but he beat was was then available.
The Lacey fight was a brilliant performance but in outboxing Lacey so comprehensively he actually made his achievement seem less impressive than it might have been. He exposed Lacey pretty thoroughly and Lacey's career subsequently has made that win look like less of an achievement than it did while Lacey was riding a wave of hype. Eubank and Jones were old when he fought them and were clearly lesser fighters than they once were, so while the names are impressive, few people are going to give Calzaghe the same credit he would have got for beating them at other stages in their careers. Kessler hasn't done much since he lost to Calzaghe but he's still fairly young and if he goes on to be a dominant champion, Calzaghe's resume will improve considerably.
Hopkins, despite being the oldest of the bunch, has actually done Calzaghe quite a big favour by putting a beating on the hugely hyped Pavlik subsequently. No matter how old his birth certificate says he is, nobody can really make an argument now that he was shot. He was no longer at his all time great peak but he was still a legitimate top 10 or even top 5 pound for pound fighter. Assuming that Kessler doesn't go on to have a spectacular career, the Hopkins fight, messy and all as it was, will go down as Calzaghe's biggest achievement and the closest he ever came to living up to his considerable talent. The Lacey fight by contrast will go down as his best, purest, performance and the one that highlight reels will draw from.
Calzaghe was arguably the most talented boxer Britain has produced since the war. But his actual resume isn't as good as a few other British boxers who didn't have his talent.
