In the end, even Wales could stand it no longer. This time there was to be no phone-vote redemption, no premium-rate miracle and — the hand trembles to type it — the greatest undefeated record in the history of British boxing is no more.

Joe Calzaghe is 46 and one, the one coming by way of a knockout after five weeks at the hands of the unsparing force that is pro-celebrity ballroom dancing.

Time and again in this series of Strictly Come Dancing, the legendary Newbridge southpaw had found himself slumped in a dizzy and confused mess at the bottom of the judges’ leaderboard. And time and again his native people had sprung loyally to the keypads to save him from a further bruising in the dance-off — and to save all of us from the equally bruising prospect of having to watch him repeat his routine. (For the viewer, light entertainment holds few prospects more daunting than being obliged to go another 90 seconds with Calzaghe in the salsa.) This time, though, after a jive that would barely have raised an eyebrow had the boxer produced it in church during a funeral, the public will finally seemed to evaporate.

Before his head had properly cleared, the Welsh dragon was sent out to face Zoe Lucker, the actress from Footballers’ Wives, and once the judges had completed the formalities, there was nothing left for Calzaghe but the consoling embraces of his fellow celebrities and a farewell smooch to Easy by the Commodores.

Ironically, that tearful last dance over the credits was probably Calzaghe’s best performance in the Strictly ring, the fighter managing to move in on Kristina Rihanoff, work busily head-to-head and get a few shots away inside.

According to the rumour mill, the pair have forged a vital connection in the monastic intensity of the training camp (if not during the live shows), so even if Calzaghe didn’t leave the contest with the title belt, he did perhaps leave it with a 32-year-old Siberian-born professional dancer, which could have its consolations.

Nevertheless, there was no disguising the man’s disappointment. In the course of the contest, Calzaghe has heard the judges describe him as “Fred the Stiff” and complain, witheringly, of rigor mortis. The experts’ overall impression seems to have been that the boxer has done more than almost any competitor before him to narrow the gap between ballroom dancing and hod-carrying at £4.50 an hour.

Calzaghe, in turn, had made it perfectly clear that the support of the people was what kept his self-belief alive in these ultra-testing circumstances. “That’s what matters to me,” he said. “As long as they think I’m good enough, I am.” But now they didn’t. So he wasn’t.

It was a lot to take on board and the hurt and sinking expression that occupied Calzaghe’s face when the results were announced, and he realised that the people were no longer in his corner, will haunt the memory.

Had there been a stool and bucket available at that point, the boxer, one feels, would have sat down and got on with some serious swilling and spitting.

How to explain the people’s desertion? On the surface it seemed there was no logical reason (and Calzaghe must have realised this) why fervent national support couldn’t carry him all the way to the final.

After all, if people were ready in big numbers to get behind his week-four foxtrot, during which he was no more or less flexible than a fork-lift truck in evening dress, they would surely vote for anything he did out there, including simply sitting in the middle of the floor until the music stopped.

Still more confusingly, Saturday’s jive was Calzaghe’s highest-scoring dance, one in which even the judges saw glimmers of improvement, Bruno Tonioli going so far as to credit the boxer with being in time “for a few moments”. By no means for the first occasion in Strictly history, the correlation between voting patterns and the quality of the dancing appeared frustratingly opaque — almost as if we weren’t dealing with an exact science here. Which can’t be right, can it?

Our own theory, for what it’s worth, is that The X Factor may have played a significant part in Calzaghe’s exit. It won’t have escaped Wales’s notice that Lloyd Daniels, one of Cheryl Cole’s fame-hungry competitors, is Welsh. And even as Calzaghe was jiving like a wardrobe, Daniels was getting himself horribly mangled in a version of Leona Lewis’s Bleeding Love.

Clearly this was going to have to be another rescue operation for Wales. But it was like asking a fire engine to tackle two blazes at once: the hose would only stretch so far. In which case, Calzaghe can account himself the victim of a split decision. It’s no easier for him to take, but at least it’s in terms he will understand.