Johnny Wattersonin New York on the Welsh champion's desire for the respect that goes with beating a legend

THE DENTIST from Pensicola eating chicken in a pizza place just off Pennsylvania Avenue was worried Roy Jones Jr would keep his arms down low when he faced Joe Calzaghe tonight. A former fighter himself, the dentist thought that when Jones beat Felix Trinidad on the path to rehabilitation last January, he was fooling around, fighting within himself.

His loyalties lay firmly along state lines and he was rooting for the Floridan, Jones, to see off Calzaghe into retirement and register the first professional defeat against the Welsh world champion in 45 outings stretching back to 1997, when he took the WBO super middleweight title from Chris Eubank.

But the truth is the dentist was in a minority. Jones is not a likeable character. He's brooding, rude and arrogant to Calzaghe's common-place likeability. With his matinee good looks and his common touch, Calzaghe is in New York city to prove to a sceptical American public he is a genuine world champion.

Beating Jones, the one-time face of American superiority in the ring, may finally secure him a place in the affections of those who are not yet entirely convinced.

Bernard Hopkins, another venerable US fighter, who Calzaghe out-pointed in a split decision last April, was 43 when he stepped in the ring with him. Jones is 39 and by Calzaghe's own admission, "may not be as good as he once was". But it's what he represents in boxing that Calzaghe is chasing.

Although this bout is at light heavyweight, Calzaghe's wish is to go down in history as one of the great super middleweights and at this point that is not confirmed. That's where Jones comes in.

Should Calzaghe beat Jones, there is no question that for the first time in his career he will be a marketable, worldwide star with fighters clamouring for an opportunity to take him on.

His profile would also soar but the fighter says that he doesn't want the millions.

"The day you only fight for money is the day you get beat," he observed this week.

Nor does Jones need the money. The surly former champion over four weight divisions is also seeking to confirm his own boxing immortality and like many champions that have gone before him is out to prove that approaching 40 years old, his powers have not altogether diminished.

The fight is for what might be the most important thing in Jones' life, bragging rights, kudos.

"I see Roy now as I saw him 10 to 15 years ago," said his coach Alton Merkerson. "In boxing you take a lot of punishment but Roy didn't take much punishment at all in his boxing career. I would say he took more in the two (Antonio) Tarver fights and the one against Johnson (Glen) than he did in his whole boxing career.

"But then everything was not together like it should have been. You look at him since those fights that he's back on track again and like the early years he's not getting hit as much. Because he's mentally and physically in shape the shots that would take you out won't even bother him."

It's all fight hype and in New York, where they look on head to heads in Madison Square Garden with a cold rationality, there are few who see the fight finishing early.

Jones' camp maintains he has gone back to basics, sought out the foundations on which his earlier successful career was built and worked from there. He's stripped down to the fundamentals and has also rediscovered a heart for the game, elements that have reinforced his natural and instinctive feeling of superiority. Jones has never felt inferior even when picking himself off the canvas, having been knocked out stone cold, but this week he has backed up the bravura with grind in the gym and complete recovery from the process of dropping down almost two stone of muscle that he had needed to take the heavyweight world title from John Ruiz.

Calzaghe is in town with a very much undersized entourage. Flanked by his long-time trainer and father, Enzo, and brother Sergio he talks of the long and winding road he has taken to get to this point. He talks about a career spent picking through the European boxing ranks as he struggled to get a world-title shot. He talks about the lack of respect he received from the public after he beat Eubank for the WBO title and then successfully defended it 21 times.

But Enzo is also being asked whether Joe is taking the fight because he wants it more than his son does, that the son is the personification of the father's lofty ambitions. Enzo bridled when that was suggested earlier this week.

"I want nothing," he said. "I want Joe to retire. I've no ego trip.

"We've sat together on this path for 25 years. Father and son. It does work. There is no better chemistry. You know how the heart works, the brain works. When he's down you pick him up . . . This is nothing to do with me. I'm just the person working with Joe. First a father, then a trainer. He believes in me. That is an important thing."

Enzo continued on to say that the son was occasionally his own worst enemy and that he lacks the very thing that Jones appears to have in abundance, "vanity", but believed he can answer any question that Jones may ask of him in the ring.

"(Bernard) Hopkins thought he had a strategy against him. He thought he'd finish Joe Calzaghe in the first round. Joe can revert to whatever he needs to revert to, whether it be a brawl or a master class.

"What will it be? Will he go toe to toe. Will he go looking for Joe Calzaghe's heart? The road has been a long one.

"When he gets to the final hurdle, Joe will not fail."

The fight around the city has been billed as the battle of the super powers, the bristling and provocative Jones against the little Brit, forced into this most dangerous of arenas in order to make a name for himself.

"Roy is at his best when he is performing," said Merkerson. "And Joe has the tendency to do the same thing. But I say that a win is a win.

"It's combat. You got to be able to make a guy miss and make him pay. You have to be smart in the ring move forward, back, lateral, circles.

"It's not like the old days, when a fighter might have had to take six punches to get one in.

"The art of boxing is to deliver punishment without receiving. I don't care how you do it."