Scouring around the web tonight, I came upon this interview with Joe Calzaghe. It's a candid interview with the U.K. Guardian, in which he says some pretty tasty things about potential upcoming fights.
Asked in the first question if he still felt he had anything to prove in boxing, Calzaghe brought up what everyone's been thinking about right away: "Basically I want another Jeff Lacy-style fight, I want to fight the big names. But unfortunately since then I've fought Sakio Bika, which I wasn't too happy about - because he's a horrible, dirty fighter - then Peter Manfredo, who was there basically just because he was a big name in the States after The Contender. Hopefully now we can set up a big fight. I want the likes of Taylor and Kessler."
That's good to hear. But what about his previous statements that Kessler wasn't an attractive fight for him? Interviewer Paolo Bandini brought up the fact that in Calzaghe's own autobiography, he seemed to dismiss the idea of a Kessler fight, and apparently, Joe has changed his tune:
"Some things have changed. Taylor doesn't seem interested, it doesn't look like he wants to fight me, and the next biggest name out there is Kessler. And fair play, in the last six months he's had some good wins - he had a fight on HBO, he's moving off."
Calzaghe goes on to talk about his long term plans. He claims to want three more marquee fights before he quits, and he threw out some familiar names:
"Taylor is a big name, he's middleweight champion, he's the ring champion ... Also, you've got Bernard Hopkins. Hopkins and Winky Wright are fighting next month, and hopefully the winner will fight me in January."
I'll take any of those fights. Anyway, you should go check out the full interview. There's a lot more interesting stuff in there, including Joe getting embarrassed when the interviewer, who clearly did his homework for this one, brought up the fact that in his autobiography, Calzaghe professes an early love for, er, Whitesnake.
Now there's a blast from the past that I'm not sure I needed.