Joe Calzaghe, Welsh boxer
Joseph William Calzaghe ( kal-ZAH-gee; born 23 March 1972) is a Welsh former professional boxer who competed from 1993 to 2008. He held world championships in two weight classes, including the unified WBA (Undisputed), 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 opponents (a record in the division, shared with Sven Ottke) 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 (WBA, WBC, and WBO) 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. As of 2022, BoxRec ranks Calzaghe as the twenty-fourth greatest fighter of all time, pound for pound, as well as the second-greatest European boxer of all time.In 2007, Calzaghe won the BBC Sports Personality of the Year Award, making him the first Welsh winner of this award since David Broome in 1960. Calzaghe was inducted into the International Boxing Hall of Fame in 2014. He was nicknamed the "Pride of Wales" and the "Italian Dragon".