THE LAST ROUND AND THE CROSSROAD

I would be remiss not to confess that I drank the Roy Jones Jr. Kool-Aid. As distasteful as it is to now admit, I was wrong, wrong, wrong. I picked Roy to upset the 5-2 favorite Calzaghe in their light heavyweight bout last Saturday night at Madison Square Garden. And since a number of my faithful readers have been kind enough to email me with a reminder, I wouldn’t want to let them down by not making a full admission of guilt.

I have no excuses other than that I may have eaten too many of those special brownies. I must say that I was feeling pretty good about myself after Jones’ first round knockdown of Calzaghe, even if it did come from a right wrist/forearm.

I must have a soft spot for over the hill icons. I picked Muhammad Ali to upset Larry Holmes, Sugar Ray Leonard to beat Terry Norris and I chose George Foreman over Shannon Briggs. (I grant you that the latter is a poor example as George won in every respect but the scorecards.) I also picked the State of California over O.J., and when that didn’t work out for me I picked O.J. over the State of Nevada.

But I returned to earth after that first round as Calzaghe hit Jones with every punch in the book between rounds 2 and 12. Seriously, I would hate to see Roy battered and bloody again, risking permanent injury in the future.

A serious gash on Roy’s right eye developed in the seventh round after Joe made it target practice after it reddened and swelled by round five. It was the first cut of his career.

I’ve read that Jones placed the blame for his defeat on his cut man, Dr. Richard Lucey. That’s a huge stretch but they did seem totally out of sync in the corner after round seven.

Actually, this might possibly be one of the few occasions in his career that Jones could legitimately be called a warrior. He gave his best effort and kept trying to win until the final bell, although he was out punched 344 to 159 according to CompuBox.

And maybe it was my imagination but it seemed as if by round nine Calzaghe seemed to back off a bit, perhaps a token of respect. He was still throwing the fast combinations but it appeared that he had lightened up on his punches.

Anyway, by round 12 Roy was trying to last and Joe had gone four corners.

You know, the problem with these types of fights on the Senior Circuit is that now there will be those who will speculate as to whether Calzaghe would have beaten a prime Roy Jones. And he might have, although certainly not as easily.

But to tell the truth, it irks me that Calzaghe is building up his resume with victories over Jones and Bernard Hopkins. As good as he is he’s still a bit of a “Joey come lately.” Few had heard of him before Jeff Lacy and before we anoint him to Sainthood, let’s see how he does against Chad Dawson, assuming that he doesn’t retire which would be in his best interests for the long haul.

SOMEONE’S LAST STAND

This Saturday former 2000 Olympic teammates Jermain Taylor and Jeff Lacy face each other in a super middleweight fight in Nashville, Tennessee. The bout will be broadcast on HBO at 10:15 p.m. ET.

In a nutshell, the winner of this fight moves on to bigger, better fights. The loser will simply no longer be relevant as a marquee fighter.

Taylor lost his last two fights, both to Kelly Pavlik in exciting encounters. Before that he scored unimpressive wins against Kassim Ouma and Cory Spinks, both light middleweights who were designed to be creampuffs for him. Before that he had two tough fights with Bernard Hopkins, winning both by controversial decisions, and Winky Wright, with whom he earned a controversial draw.

In other words, it’s been quite some time since he’s been as dominant as his potential would seem to demand.

As for Lacy, he really hasn’t been the same since Joe Calzaghe, who took him to the woodshed in March 2006. He’s had two questionable majority decisions against the junior varsity and a blah unanimous decision over an uninspired Peter Manfredo Jr.

There have been moments when the question was not so much if he would win but if he would be knocked out.

There’s a school of thought that Lacy was always overrated and was simply promoted into being “Left Hook” Lacy, the Mike Tyson of 168. It certainly appeared that way in the fight with Calzaghe. Just about every so called expert picked Lacy over Joe.

Joe was, and is, considered a slapper and therefore would have no shot against the powerful Lacy hooks. But, as Roy Jones discovered, when a guy slaps you 1000 times, it hurts.

In his first fight after Calzaghe, Lacy fought Vitali Tsypko and suffered an extensive rotator cuff injury. He underwent reconstructive surgery on the shoulder and was out for a year to rehabilitate.

So the question is whether time can heal the negative memories of his nightmarish night with Calzaghe and just how much power and speed was lost due to a very difficult injury?

Look for Lacy to come out aggressively and soon be in trouble because of it. I like Taylor to be the TKO winner before the end of round five.