No Ordinary Joe

By the BBC’s Derek ‘Robbo’ Robson

Well a bit of justice was done on Sunday.

Not the Boro’s utter dismantling of them Arsenal boys that left Arsene Wenger with the usual gripes about teams doing their nasty hard tackles on his darling boys. (No mention of the happy-slapping Eboue, mind).

Nah, we gave the Sports Personality Award to the right person. He should’ve got in the top three last year at the very least, but the forelock-tugging numb-nuts of the British public decided to chuck it the way of a toff and her gee-gee.

Calzaghe has not lost for 10 years. Sports Personality of the Decade, then.

Now I’ve heard them that’s in the know banging on about how boxing shouldn’t really be recognised in this way. And I’ve heard some long-winded apologies from boxing fans on phone-ins and the like.

The issue comes up when a likeable sort of fella like Ricky ‘Hitman’ Hatton (or Rick-yyyyyyyyyyyyyyyuh Hitman H-aaaaaaaa-tuuuuuuuuuunnnn as he’s now known) gets dumped on the canvas by a sickening blow.

Your medical profession says people shouldn’t be paid to inflict brain damage on each other. It’s hard to argue against that.

Your pro-fight lobby reel off a string of cliches such as:

1. It keeps young men off the streets.
Right. So does footy training but you don’t have blokes bashing the hell out of each other (if we ignore Messrs Bowyer and Barton, allegedly)

Joe Calzaghe-A deserving winner

I was absolutely delighted yesterday when Joe Calzaghe won the prestigious BBC Sports Personality of the Year for 2007. Calzaghe received just under 178,000 votes to beat off firm favourite Lewis Hamilton who gained around 122,000 votes. Calzaghe has had an incredible career with a fighting record which stands at 44-0. He has been the longest reigning title holder of any weight class in boxing which has just passed the 10 year mark. He beat Peter Manfredo Jr earlier this year and then beat Mikkel Kessler to unify the WBA, WBC, WBO, and Ring Magazine super middleweight titles which was another incredible achievement and confirmed him as one of the best pound for pound fighters in the world.

It is great that the British public decided to vote for a true champion rather than Lewis Hamilton who was a close runner-up. Don’t get me wrong as Hamilton is incredibly talented and had an astonishing year considering he was a rookie. I reckon(and so do many others!) that he will win the Formula 1 world championship sooner rather than later and it will be nice to see him win the Sports Personality Award when he does. However if he had won this year it would not have reflected sporting achievement but general popularity which is not really what I think the award is about. Calzaghe has truly achieved sporting excellence in his field and has been given the recognition he thoroughly deserves.