34 year old professional boxer Joe Calzaghe has claimed that he will never be nominated for the BBC Sports Personality of the Year, which is on the 10th of December, because he is ‘a winner’. The great Welsh champion believes that only losers ever do well in the contest.
He told reporters “The football team loses, the cricket team loses. Listen, I’m a winner, I’m a champion.” And “It seems like the country only gets behind losers.”
The WBO, IBF and IBO super-middleweight champion Calzaghe has never made the call in of nominees for the award, but claims that he is not at all bothered and says he does not care about recognition: “Does it bother me that I’ve not been put up? Of course not. At the end of the day, maybe it’s because I’m a winner,”
The favourite to win this year is the much loved Ryder Cup idol Darren Clarke. Even though the triumphant Calzaghe is by and large rated fifth favourite behind world equestrian champion Zara Phillips, Scottish tennis player Andrew Murray and England cricketer Monty Panesar.
Recent Sports Personality winners have included five-time Olympic champion rower Sir Steve Redgrave and England Ashes legend Andrew Flintoff – who are definitely not losers in any way; if anything they are great sportsman that will go down in history. Calzaghe who has won all 41 of his bouts went on to say “I’m the longest reigning world champion in Britain and I’m happy in my own ability. My name will live on. Full stop. Look in the record books. And it’s not finished yet.”
Calzaghe is to defend his WBO super-middleweight belt against Sakio Bika in Manchester on the 14th of October.
He finished by saying: “As a nation, it looks like you haven’t got to be a winner to be a personality.”
Do you think Joe is being a bit arrogant here or does he have a fair point? I suppose to be a good boxer you have to be confident in yourself; I mean look at Ali and Sugar Ray Leonard.
Please leave your thoughts on the subject at the bottom of the page.
of course he is right, steve redgrave won fair enough, flintoff has lost lots of england matches, an unbeated champion for 10 years who has beaten the best is overlooked by zara phillips who rides a horse? personally i think it is due to him not being english
Comment by Kiefty — March 29, 2007 @ 2:21 pm