JOE CALZAGHE'S career has been defined by his outstanding performance against Jeff Lacy. His autobiography, ghost-written by Brian Doogan, fully appreciates this.

The opening chapter cuts straight to a moment three weeks before their March 2006 showdown. Calzaghe had damaged his left wrist in training. Damage sustained to the same hand that had already caused the bout to be postponed once before and had Calzaghe determined to pull out of the second date.

Damage to his hands is a theme that runs throughout his life story. Even in his amateur days, injuries of this sort led his father or himself to pull out of bouts representing Wales.

Because of his lack of availability, the Welsh ABA did not select him for the Olympic Games in 1992. These were the Barcelona Games from which Robin Reid, a fighter whose skill Calzaghe holds in low regard, returned with a bronze medal.Some have speculated that Calzaghe's technique may be a cause of the consistent problems his hands have suffered. He throws hooks with a vertical fist, a clubbing style that has been unkindly referred to as ‘slapping.' But the cause may well be nothing more complicated than the fact that, in his finest performances, he hits his opponents so hard and so often.

Although Joe wanted to pull out of the Lacy fight, his father and trainer, Enzo, persuaded him otherwise.

Calzaghe's history might have been very different. He might well have become the laughing stock his father feared. He certainly would not have achieved the acclaim that he feels he has deserved throughout his career.

Hugh McIlvanney, the venerable sportswriter, wrote: "All who watched Calzaghe outspeed, out-think and punishingly outbox the American through every one of 12 rounds had no option but to recognise what they were seeing as one of the greatest displays of superb technique, confidence and fighting intelligence a British boxer has delivered in a major contest."

Despite the ability that Calzaghe knew he had, he still came perilously close to missing that date with destiny. He has pulled out of other matches, but it does not seem fair to accuse him of cowardice, as some of his rivals have.

No one who steps into a boxing ring can be accused of that and certainly not a man who has held his title with some style since 1997.

Rather, Calzaghe seems committed to taking his fights in the best condition possible. He proved himself against Lacy, but one has to rue those missed opportunities early in his career. Not only his absence from the Barcelona Olympics. Steve Collins retired before Calzaghe had the chance to face him. Calzaghe believes that Bernard Hopkins was too shrewd a businessman to risk the contest, though the deal came close. Calzaghe still sounds aggrieved that he hasn't broken into the American circuit made up of Hopkins, Jermain Taylor and Winky Wright. This book is certainly an interesting insight into the fights that did make up his career and which the majority of the British public, who did not have Sky, were denied seeing. The clash with Chris Eubank, which secured Calzaghe the vacant WBO super-middleweight title, was, by his own account, a minor classic.

After suffering a knockdown in the first round, Eubank took him "down into the trenches", a test which Calzaghe still regards as the sternest of his career. He passed, emerging with a unanimous decision after 12 rounds. Calzaghe is also lucid when talking about the dangers inherent in his sport. Eubank and Michael Watson, Nigel Benn and Gerald McClellan were of the generation that preceded him in the same weight division and Calzaghe is aware of what they suffered. He regards these incidents as accidents. In response to tragedies such as these, arguments have been made for boxing's abolition. Their claim is that boxers, unlike other sportsmen, intend to harm their opponents.

But Calzaghe, a good finisher he admits, denies that he ever enters the ring with such an intention and takes a dim view of any such pre-match posturing, which some of his opponents, like Omar Sheika, have indulged in. Calzaghe was particularly moved by the plight of Paul Ingle, who after losing his IBF featherweight title underwent emergency brain surgery to remove a blood clot. He knew Ingle and believes that he was hampered in his ability to defend himself by not losing weight for the fight properly.

Calzaghe considers that it is his skill that has kept him safe through 43 professional fights. Indeed he suffered the first cut of his career in his penultimate outing against the rough and ready Sakio Bika.

As luck would have it, Joe, bearing the scars of that fight, met Sugar Ray Leonard, one of his idols, for the first time. Leonard provides a foreword for the book, in which he says: "So Joe coming out against Bika with only six stitches around his eye did pretty well. What he was made to do - and what I did against Duran - was show his versatility and his resilience."

Some sportsmen's autobiographies, like Ricky Hatton's (with Niall Hickman) offering of last year, drift a little too much into the realm of after-dinner anecdotes for my liking.

No Ordinary Joe, for the most part, stays in and around the ring and the gym. It is at its most interesting when discussing the art that he has devoted himself to since the age of 10.

As he says: "This is who I am. This is me. I find myself when I'm in the ring."