Debate: is Joe Calzaghe Britain's greatest-ever boxer?

Fame was probably the last thing that drove Joe Calzaghe to the pinnacle of his sport and it is not something that he is going to want to cling on to now that his career may be over. So there will be no dancing shows, no trips to the jungle and probably no more appearances in the ring.

Looking back on Sunday morning's points win over Roy Jones Jr at Madison Square Garden that pushed his remarkable unbeaten record to 46 bouts, Calzaghe, 36, said that it felt like the end, although he was not going to make any rash announcements. Yet, while he is undecided, the only reasons he could give were to retire.

“Am I tempted to carry on? Not really,” Calzaghe, who retained his Ring magazine light-heavyweight title, said. “[But] I love boxing, my dad [Enzo] has got a great gym, I want to help out with that. I've got a promoter's licence, so I'll stay involved in a different way. I'm going to go away with my family, chill out and make a decision in a few weeks.”

But Calzaghe said that motivation is the key and money is not motivation enough. “I've achieved everything I wanted to achieve,” he said. “To beat [Mikkel] Kessler, to be undisputed champion in front of more than 50,000 fans in Cardiff, was great, so I was stepping up to light-heavyweight just to do something different. Then I beat two legends in America [Jones and Bernard Hopkins]. What else is there to do?” Very little.

A rematch with Jones is not viable and Calzaghe is not interested in facing Hopkins again, so Chad Dawson, 26, the IBF light-heavyweight champion and a boxer not on Calzaghe's radar six months ago, has been mentioned. “Chad is a good young fighter who has won a couple of decent fights, [but] what's the point?” Calzaghe said. “There's no one left to fight.

“I always had this drive to be world champion. I trained like a pro every day since I was 13 or 14. Talent alone doesn't make a great fighter - you need dedication, too. I got robbed of a chance to go to the Olympics, which was the worst thing in my career.”

Calzaghe revealed that, in the ring, Jones had sung to him a song the American had recorded before the bout. And as victory closed in for the Welshman, Jones paid him the compliment of changing the lyrics. “He was singing his song, ‘Hey, Joe, you know you're 45 and 0,'” Calzaghe said. “In the eleventh round, he said 46 and 0.” There may not be a 47.