No Ordinary Joe by Joe Calzaghe

Author:Joe Calzaghe [Joe Calzaghe]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2007-05-24T04:00:00+00:00

ROUND EIGHT

Where Danger Lurks

In my heart I never considered quitting boxing. Of course, I was frustrated about the injuries and the way my career was going, but I was still champion and I needed to fight. Even if only for financial reasons, there was no way I could walk away from the sport.

I knew I wasn’t performing and, emotionally, this was hurting me because I’ve always felt good about doing what I do. I find it strange sometimes but I know I make a difference in people’s lives and that’s uplifting, especially when I’m training. Sometimes when I’m home and I don’t have a fight to look forward to I get depressed, because climbing into the ring and standing under those shining lights, surrounded by thousands of people who are about to experience a unique kind of thrill, is the most exciting, daunting, frightening and beautiful feeling. This is who I am and people look up to me and respect me for it. But if I didn’t box, what would I be? If something had to give, it wasn’t going to be boxing.

At that time I lived almost next door to Oakdale Pitch & Putt and I used to spend a lot of spare time there, almost every day. Whatever the weather, I would head out with my dad, even if there was water flooding the greens. I’m no Tiger Woods but I played the course so regularly that I was sure I had mastered it. One day I went round in two over par. I missed a hole-in-one by an inch after hitting a perfect wedge shot. The next day, of course, I was twenty over and back to being a hacker. I can’t remember why but we stopped playing for about a month and my elbow started to get better. The problem might have stemmed from the chronic injury in my right wrist and swinging the club probably triggered it off, I don’t know, but I was happy to give up, if it meant that my elbow would be pain-free. It was purely by chance that I had stopped going out to play golf and the elbow got better. Who would have thought that a game of golf could be so dangerous for your health?

I had not sparred for over a year at this point but I said to Frank that I wanted to carry on and I would fight Sheika, if the date was pushed back. So he set a new date of 12 August at Wembley Conference Centre and persuaded me to come to training camp in Cheshunt in Hertfordshire to get some good sparring in. Frank knew that I was much better than I’d been showing and he wanted to make sure that I was right, that I would have the best possible chance of producing the kind of performance I hadn’t been able to, for a variety of reasons, since the Eubank fight. I spent two weeks in Cheshunt, the only time I’ve gone away to train in my pro career, and I was absolutely woeful.

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