LOOKING IN ON: BOXING

By Jeff Haney (contact)

Saturday, Nov. 3, 2007 | 7:26 a.m.

Fighting mostly in the United Kingdom throughout his 14-year professional career, super middleweight champion Joe Calzaghe has never fashioned a high profile among American boxing fans.

Obviously, he doesn't have that issue in his homeland.

Millennium Stadium in Cardiff, Wales, has been scaled to accommodate more than 63,000 fans for tonight's title unification fight pitting Calzaghe against Mikkel Kessler of Denmark. Calzaghe puts his WBO and Ring magazine belts on the line and Kessler risks his WBC and WBA championships.

The crowd, which will be overwhelmingly pro-Calzaghe, could challenge the attendance record for an indoor boxing match , which was set at the second fight between Muhammad Ali and Leon Spinks, Sept. 15, 1978, at the Superdome in New Orleans. Ali won a 15-round unanimous decision before 63,350, avenging his loss seven months earlier in Las Vegas.

HBO (Cox cable channel 200) will televise the fight live at 6 p.m. PST - 1 a.m. in Wales.

The fight is assured of breaking the European indoor mark for boxing, set in April when Calzaghe stopped Peter Manfredo Jr. before 35,000-plus in Cardiff in his most recent bout.

The superlatives don't end with the attendance figures. Calzaghe and Kessler bring combined records of 82-0 with 61 knockouts into the bout. Calzaghe (43-0, 32 KOs), who has owned the WBO title since beating Chris Eubank in 1997, defends his belt for a division-best 21st time.

A successful defense would tie Calzaghe with super middleweight Sven Ottke, who made 21 defenses, and put him behind only heavyweight Joe Louis (25 defenses), light heavyweight Dariusz Michalczewski (23), and strawweight Ricardo Lopez (23).

"If somebody said in 10 years' time that I'd still be fighting as world champion, I wouldn't have believed it," Calzaghe, 35, said. "I'm still a hungry fighter. I still believe I can go on and achieve great goals, collect another new belt by beating Kessler and possibly win a light heavyweight title as well."

Tonight's fight leads off a strong lineup of championship fights scheduled to close out the year. Also tonight, Juan Manuel Marquez and Rocky Juarez square off in a super featherweight title fight in Tucson (Showtime, Cox cable channel 240, 10 p.m.). Miguel Cotto and Shane Mosley meet in a welterweight championship bout Nov. 10 at Madison Square Garden in New York, and Floyd Mayweather Jr. puts his unofficial pound-for-pound title on the line against Ricky Hatton on Dec. 8 at the MGM Grand Garden Arena.

Calzaghe, a 3-2 betting favorite against Kessler (39-0, 29 KOs), beat up previously unbeaten Jeff Lacy last year, winning a unanimous decision and dispelling criticism that he was a "slappy" fighter lacking in power.

"Look at Lacy's face after the fight," Calzaghe said. "He looked like he'd been run over by something, all smashed up.

"The good thing is, (Kessler) is going into this fight thinking I can't punch. I'm really looking forward to wiping that smile off his face on fight night, because both my hands have been really strong in training."

Fancy footwork

With Mayweather's stint on the reality TV show "Dancing with the Stars" concluded, he has turned his full attention to training for Hatton, the pride of Manchester, England.

"I was happy just to get the experience to go on 'Dancing with the Stars,' just to do something different, because I was the only athlete (on the show) that was active," Mayweather said. "I was doing two things at one time.

"I had to wake up, go to the dance studio. After the dance studio, go to the boxing gym. After the boxing gym, go run. After the run, I had to go back to the dance studio. After the dance studio, then I had to go to physical training at the fitness gym. So, I mean it was grueling, but was it worth it? Absolutely."

Hatton, who dislikes Mayweather personally, complimented his moves on the dance floor after watching a few clips from the show.

"Although it's something I wouldn't do, he looked to be quite a good dancer," Hatton said. "I don't think you want to see me on a Saturday in Manchester after about 10 pints of Guinness dancing a bit."

Cotto vs. Mosley

Cotto, the WBA welterweight champ and a featured fighter in Bob Arum's Top Rank stable, is a 3-2 betting favorite against 36-year-old Mosley in next week's fight. Cotto, 27, is coming off an 11th-round stoppage of Zab Judah in June.

Jack Mosley, Shane's father and trainer, said his son has not lost his trademark speed.

"I don't know what Bob Arum was thinking about when he said, 'We'll fight Shane,' " Jack Mosley said. "I mean, he's thinking about age but that's not going to work.

"He's looking sharp, and his sparring partners testified that he has tremendous power, tremendous body shots. Shane is just tremendously too powerful for Cotto."