page_title: Joe Calzaghe
section_title: WBO, The Ring Magazine, WBA, WBC & Lineal super-middleweight champion
hierarchical_section_title: Joe Calzaghe / Professional career / WBO super-middleweight champion / WBO, The Ring Magazine, WBA, WBC & Lineal super-middleweight champion
caption_attribution_description: Good luck to Joe (who lives down the road in Newport, Wales, UK) with his fight tonight in the US of A. Among the crowd will be Bruce Willis, Sly Stallone, Arnie and erm Simon Cowell. (Photo taken in Birmingham NEC, Dec 2007) www.bbc.co.uk/dna/606/A34830588
context_page_description: Joseph William Calzaghe CBE is a Welsh former professional boxer who competed from 1993 to 2008. He held world championships in two weight classes, including the unified WBA, WBC, IBF, WBO, Ring magazine and lineal super-middleweight titles, and the Ring light-heavyweight title.
  Calzaghe is the longest-reigning super-middleweight world champion in boxing history, having held the WBO title for over 10 years and defending the title against 20 boxers before moving up to light-heavyweight. As his super-middleweight and light-heavyweight reigns overlapped, he retired with the longest continual time as world champion of any active boxer at the time. Calzaghe was also the first boxer to unify three of the four major world titles at super-middleweight, and was the first Ring champion in that weight class.
  Between 2006 and 2008, Calzaghe was ranked by The Ring as one of the world's top ten active boxers, pound for pound, reaching a peak ranking of third in January 2009. He retired in February 2009 with an undefeated record, and as a reigning world champion.
context_section_description: In May 2007, Frank Warren released details to BBC 5 Live and on his website that Calzaghe had accepted Mogens Palle's offer of $5 million to fight undefeated WBA world champion Mikkel Kessler. The bout took place at Cardiff's Millennium Stadium on 4 November. The fight was a unification bout for the WBO, The Ring, WBA (Super) and WBC super-middleweight titles. Calzaghe won by unanimous decision, surpassing the 20 defences made by Bernard Hopkins and Larry Holmes at middleweight and heavyweight respectively. Only former heavyweight champion Joe Louis (with 25 defences), former light heavyweight champion Dariusz Michalczewski (23 defences), former minimumweight champion Ricardo López (23 defences), and former heavyweight champion Wladimir Klitschko (23 defences) have made more title defences.
  Calzaghe was frequently described as undisputed champion, but since he had relinquished the IBF title, others argued that this was not strictly accurate. Reuters called him the "Undisputed King" of the division, while David A Avila said he was "the true undisputed world champion. Forget about the IBF titleholder Alejandro Berrio. That's really Calzaghe's belt too." The WBA describes an "Undisputed Champion" as one who holds any two of the WBA, WBC, IBF and WBO titles; which Calzaghe did after beating Kessler and had earlier done after beating Lacy.
  Calzaghe split with promoter Frank Warren in June 2008 and announced that he would promote his fights personally for the remainder of his career. The split caused Warren to launch a court case against Calzaghe, claiming that a verbal promise to promote the Roy Jones Jr. fight was broken and that Calzaghe owed him $1.4 million; Calzaghe in turn claimed that Warren owed him past fees. In March 2009 the High Court ruled that Warren had persuaded Calzaghe to sign contracts under duress when Calzaghe was hungry and dehydrated preparing for matches and that Warren's company Sports Network Limited owed Calzaghe $2.8 million in unpaid fees.
caption: Calzaghe in 2007
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