How can we do suitable honour to the wonderful boxing career of Joe Calzaghe while paying a decent minimum of respect to that battered old punchbag historical perspective? We could start by admitting that what was feverishly hailed as a triumph over a legend in Madison Square Garden last weekend looked rather more like the vandalising of a relic.

Roy Jones Jr went to the ring in New York with his once-beautiful talent blatantly burnt out and, having made a fleeting attempt to throw the ashes in Calzaghe’s eyes with a knockdown after two minutes, he subsided so rapidly and resignedly into acceptance of his terminal decline that he lost every one of the remaining 11 rounds on all three judges’ scorecards. Yet much of the media reaction has encouraged us to recognise that the so-called contest would represent a magnificent valediction if Calzaghe’s talk of retiring now with a splendidly unblemished record of 46 straight victories should prove, in welcome violation of fight trade tradition, to be reliable. No less a figure than the former world featherweight champion Barry McGuigan responded to Calzaghe’s display with unmitigated awe: “He was fabulous . . . My God, sublime — absolutely sublime.” Certainly Calzaghe did an impressive job of work, especially in so swiftly rendering meaningless his early embarrassment, but the willingness to suggest he’d had to reach dizzying heights of virtuosity to deal with the scant, sad remnants of Jones’s abilities left no doubt that perspective was heading for the intensive care unit.

The hero of the hour wasn’t averse to giving it an extra nudge in that direction. When the recently crowned IBF and IBO light-heavyweight champion Chad Dawson was mentioned as a possible provider of a final challenge, Calzaghe dismissed him as somebody who had won his titles last month by beating an aged, shot fighter in Antonio Tarver. That was true but if Tarver, who turns 40 this week, is undeniably decrepit, what does that make the barely-two-months-younger Jones, on whom he inflicted two severe hammerings (one a second-round stoppage) in 2004 and 2005? Those defeats, along with the brutal ninth-round knockout at the hands of Glen Johnson that occurred between them, effectively finished Jones as a top-rank fighter.

Even the brief sensation of finding himself the ghost with a hammer in his hand at the Garden was never likely to lift him above the dispiriting awareness that he was incurably devoid of the energy and drive to supply coherent, sustained opposition. Calzaghe’s recovery was quicker than it had been after his habit of being more impulsive than alert at the start of fights caused him to be similarly floored by Bernard Hopkins for a first-round count in Las Vegas seven months ago. But in both cases winning comprehensively was a smooth, assured process, as well it might have been, given that his only two assignments in America have confronted him with men whose aggregate age is 82. The years have piled up for him too (he will be 37 in March) but his undamaged looks and physical freshness testify to the benefits of having spared himself the frequent commitment to wars that has been the norm for Jones, Hopkins and their kind in the US.

His brilliant southpaw skills, remarkable fitness and vigour, iron chin and unsubduable heart have always been allied to business priorities, which is as it should be in sport’s least forgiving commercial environment. Nobody could dream of questioning his right to the careful matchmaking that has helped him to achieve the extraordinary distinction of retaining possession of a world title at super-middleweight for 10 years or his insistence on campaigning almost exclusively in Britain (two unhazardous sorties to the Continent were the isolated exceptions prior to this year’s belated expedition to America). But such circumspection cannot be ignored when there is a clamour to persuade us that, with his longevity as a champion and his 46-and-oh record, he must be rated the supreme British boxer since the second world war.

Statistics mean a lot but they can never tell the whole story. Having lost fights and titles doesn’t affect the standing of Muhammad Ali or Sugar Ray Leonard. Fighters should ultimately be judged by the company they have kept inside the ropes, by the level of threat they have overcome, and such assessments sometimes involve taking account of the boldness with which they have carried their banner in the most hostile places. Much has been made of the fact that nine of Calzaghe’s victims were either holding or had held world titles when he met them and that is a formidable credential. But it is partly explained by the rampant proliferation of championships in boxing and the truth is that few of the men he has beaten in their prime will justify more than tiny footnotes in ring history.

There can be no objection to the shrewd caution that has permeated his largely stay-at-home career but it has relevance when the debate about Britain’s best post-war boxer embraces, say, the contrasting experience of Ken Buchanan. After he became world lightweight champion in 1970 by defeating the Panamanian Ismael Laguna in San Juan, Puerto Rico, Buchanan’s next 22 fights took him six times to New York, four times to Copenhagen, twice to Cagliari, and once each to Los Angeles, Johannesburg, Miami Beach, Toronto, Paris and Tokyo — leaving just four engagements in this country. He suffered two defeats on his global travels, both in world title matches, one a violently controversial loss to the rising Roberto Duran and the other a close split decision in Japan. Along the way, there was a moment in a Garden elevator when an excited New Yorker told me Buchanan was the sweetest fighter he had seen since Sugar Ray Robinson. No doubt the man was getting carried away but I am convinced he was talking about the best Britain has produced in the past seven decades.

Welcome return of magical Maradona

IF THERE is a sudden outbreak of lurching and sprawling around the home dugout at Hampden Park on Wednesday night, we’ll have to suspect that Scotland’s assistant manager has fallen for another feint from Diego Maradona. Terry Butcher is among the multitude of former defenders who will happily admit to having form for such behaviour. These days the big, agreeable Englishman is right-hand man to George Burley. And as they prepare the Scottish squad for the midweek friendly match they are sure to be grateful it is only the threat of a novice head coach that Maradona will present on his debut in charge of Argentina at the ground where he scored his first goal for his country as a teenager in 1979.

However, the appearance of one of football’s most instantly recognisable figures will, of course, stir in Butcher recollections of a time when he was serving his homeland’s cause on the field at the 1986 World Cup finals in Mexico — and even the memory of the dastardly Hand of God goal won’t be more vivid for him than that of the second blow struck by a genius who was constructing the most decisive individual contribution to a major tournament ever seen or likely to be seen.

When I interviewed Maradona before that quarter-final, he said: “The English are big and strong in defence but their movements are sluggish and we are going to try and take advantage of this with short bursts of speed to pass them.” But at the Azteca stadium it was an unbelievably sustained burst of dribbling at ferocious pace, a 60-yard surge, that left Butcher and his fellow defenders littered like wreckage in its wake before Peter Shilton was made the final victim of the greatest of World Cup goals.

It is natural enough that Maradona’s appeal to the global football public has readily survived the trauma and squalor that have recurringly swamped his private life. Who can be surprised that so many millions are eager to share his hope of permanent liberation from the shadows? The images of his talent that continue to shimmer in our minds oblige us to feel that way.

Top tips for McKeown

Views may differ about whether or not Dean McKeown is a good man but he is certainly hard to keep down. The 48-year-old jockey was warned off for four years for playing a key role in a betting-exchange scam. Allowed to go on riding pending an appeal to the British Horseracing Authority, he was then adjudged to have offended again under racing’s “non-triers” rule and had his licence immediately revoked. Now he seems to be setting himself up as a professional tipster. ‘Having a “mole in every hole” has and will continue to keep my finger bang on the pulse,’ he writes to potential customers. Maybe he would like tips on the English language.