JOE CALZAGHE W12 (split) BERNARD HOPKINS

Sometimes, a boxer has to forget about looking stylish and just get stuck into his opponent and fight his way through, with will superseding skill. That, I thought, was what happened in Joe Calzaghe’s split, hard-fought but well-deserved win over Bernard Hopkins in Saturday night’s light-heavyweight fight.

Down in the first round, nicked across the bridge of the nose, Calzaghe had an unpromising start but came on at the finish.

Some will consider the decision debatable, with Adalaide Byrd of Las Vegas scoring it for Hopkins, 114-113 but judges Ted Gimza of Chicago and Chuck Giampa of Las Vegas making Calzaghe a clear winner, 115-112 and 116-111 respectively.

Watching on HBO after a last-moment complication cancelled a planned trip to Las Vegas, I had no doubt that Calzaghe had won although I did not see it as wide as “unofficial official” Harold Lederman’s 116-111.

Hopkins was cute and crafty and he landed some solid right hands, but for round after round it was Calzaghe looking as if he wanted to fight whereas Hopkins was looking to pick his moments for a clean shot followed by an evasive move or a headfirst dive into a clinch.

Yes, Hopkins is a clever technician but this wasn’t an Archie Moore, Sugar Ray Leonard or Floyd Mayweather Jr. type of boxing exhibition where a master craftsman is making an opponent miss and then making him pay but countering crisply. This, at least as I saw it, was a 43-year-old veteran seeking victory by landing a clean hit here and there — or maybe a quick bursts of punches — and then avoiding contact in an exaggerated way.

Calzaghe was rushing in, and he was slapping quite a lot — although I did notice some hard left-handers from the Welshman’s southpaw stance — but in the overall pattern of the fight Calzaghe was looking like the man who really wanted to win. He was going for it, as they say.

I thought that Hopkins’s reputation as the quintessential tough guy took a hit when he twice gave the appearance of being in agony from low blows that did not look terribly hard (one of them in fact was more like a cuff than a punch, thrown almost in reflex manner as Calzaghe was having his head pushed down).

HBO’s Jim Lampley, remarking on an Oscar-winning performance from Hopkins, suggested that the old campaigner was taking advantage of the time-out in the 10th round in a bid to “stop Calzaghe’s flowing momentum”. Quite likely, although I also thought that Hopkins was doing his best to get referee Joe Cortez to deduct a point from Calzaghe — I thought this was especially the case when Hopkins doubled up from a punch that no one seemed to see land in the 11th.

HBO analyst Max Kellerman sharply pointed out to Lampley that neither of them had taken the punch that caused Hopkins such apparent distress in the 10th. True enough, but Calzaghe's left hand was nothing like, for instance, the low blows that Andrew Golota was driving into Riddick Bowe’s groin in their two fights — absolutely no comparison. Anyone, surely, could have seen the difference. The way Hopkins dropped to his knees was something that fans in a bygone age might have expected from British horizontal heavyweight “Fainting” Phil Scott. It wasn’t something you would have seen from Sugar Ray Robinson or Marvin Hagler, nor, come to that, from Bennie Briscoe, Cyclone Hart, Henry Hank or others too numerous to name.

Before the fight, Hopkins had told me in a telephone interview that he hoped Calzaghe wouldn’t make him look like a “jailhouse bully.” Instead it was Calzaghe who was made to look like the bully in those 10th and 11th rounds.

A storming last round from Calzaghe seemed to have put the issue beyond any reasonable doubt but, of course, when a fight goes to the scorecards you hold your breath on the outcome.

It was by no means an artistic performance by Calzaghe but it was a winning one, and, in a difficult fight such as this, that’s all that matters.