Customer Reviews
Highly recommended - By: P. Bevan, 01 Feb 2008 
I read this book in 1 day & couldn`t put it down. Its a great insight into what makes a champion & what doesn`t. I particularly enjoyed the interaction between the other fighters that Calzaghe meets on his travels. It reallly gives you an idea what these people are like in real life. It is a chronological, in-depth story of Calzaghe's life, good & bad times.
I also found it interesting to read his side of the story. Particularly when you read something in the news, it isn`t very often you get to hear the real story from the horses mouth.
It is very well written & pulls no punches!
No Ordinary Sports autobiography - By: M. E. Broadley, 27 Oct 2007 This is without doubt one of the most entertaining & thoroughly enjoyable sports bio's i have read. Numerous stories during the book make you laugh, in particular the various spats between Joe & Enzo. Most notably when his dad parked 2 miles away from the weigh-in to avoid paying to park!!! Also, this book gives a great insight into Joe himself & honestly appraises his career & feelings prior to the big fights.
My favourite sports book of alll time is Donald McCreas Dark Trade & i found 'No Ordinary Joe' is not far behind. Very well written & easy to read, so much so that i finished it in 2 days on holiday earlier this year.
An excellent read for sports fans, much better than the usual Autobiography's - By: Mr. N. C. Heys, 26 Oct 2007 The best Autobiography of a sports-man I have read.
I read Freddie Flintoff & Michael Vaughan's autobiographies when I was on holiday last year & to be honest they both seemed like token efforts devoid of feeling & not offering much insight - Don't get me wrong, they were professionallly written & I don't regret reading them but when I put them down I was left with the question - Well, what have I reallly learned about the person? Put crudely, there was no X-factor.
No Ordinary Joe is different. The book is ghostwritten but unless i'd read it on the inside pages I never would have known as some of the thoughts seem very personal & honest - Very rare today!(I'm 29 by the way not 79)
No Ordinary Joe is a refreshingly honest & often amusing (In an intentionallly dry way) look at the life & career of Joe Calzaghe. The book covers the background & history of his family & the influence (In particular that of his Dad & uncles) they have had throughout his career as well as his preparations, the fights themselves & how he saw/sees his career progressing & what he intends to do after boxing.
Importantly (and probably one of the reasons why I enjoyed it) the book doesn't dodge the controversial issues and, in fact, meets alll of them head on. I have followed Joe's career closely & can't think of any accusation etc. that wasn't addressed - Being callled chicken for pulling out of specific fights, Enzo being briefly sacked as his trainer, The honesty about where his career was at the point of the Omar Sheika fight.
In fact, the book opens with a quote from his father/trainer Enzo "If you pull out of the Lacy fight, alll that you'll be remembered for in the boxing world is for being a f*cking chicken, is that what you want?"
There are numerous other frank quotes like this & while some people might have been tempted to stay away from this type of thing, seeing it unecessary/too risky to address, this book doesn't. Articles criticizing Joe are plentiful (often quoted from newspapers columns) & believe me when I say they have not been amended or watered down in order to influence the reader to see him in a better light, you just get the article & then you have Joe's take on it, which to me seems to be largely genuine.
The book of course covers alll of Joe's professional (And the significant amateur) fights & I enjoyed the insight into his state of mind pre-fight, how his fight preparations went, as well as how badly & how surprisingly long his injuries have affected him. I was also pleased to see his healthy sense of self awareness in admitting that he sometimes can't half be a pain in the ar*e & a moody so & so.
A damn good & insightful read & to make a bad (but accurate) pun, it pulls no punches.
Nick
Fascinating if carefully monitored look at a boxing star - By: J. A. Harrison, 03 Sep 2007 
Joe Calzaghe's autobiography is a quick read and, for the most, entertaining enough. It's not orgies & sniping - like Nigel Benn's; it's not anecdotes & swearing - like Ricky Hatton's; it's a straightforward, seemingly, appraisal of a career that is yet to be done.
Calzaghe is an enigma. He is very low profile considering he is - without doubt - one of the best British boxers ever. For the legions who have heard of Amir Khan & Frank Bruno, there are smalll cohorts who know how good this guy is.
And, ironicallly, he takes a lot of stick. Go on a boxing talk board & say you're a Calzaghe fan & wait for the vitriol to pour down.
He doesn't say it directly, but Calzaghe is a complex man. He relates how two people close to him - his Dad Enzo (great trainer, by the way, my God how good is he!) & Frank Warren, the promoter - have told him, in no uncertain terms, to just get over the hand injuries & get on with it. He puts that in his autobiography, but still he is mumbling & fussing about his hands. It is almost cognitive dissonance: "I know everyone says I should just fight on, but listen tm my hand problems & feel sorry for me!"
There is precious little in terms of Calzaghe's personal life which, I feel, is a shame. Not that I want to hear the in & outs of his divorce, but he has cited how much it affected him & yet, apart from a line, we wouldn't know he was married.
There's a bit of the confessional about the book. JC knows he is an awkward so & so - he's an Ayrton Senna, a Nick Faldo, a Kevin Pietersen, a sporting perfectionist, a ludicrously talented man who has difficulty relating to those who just don't get it, who just don't get how good he is. He admits this, but, unlike Ricky Hatton, he has not learnt to stand back. To laugh at himself. He'd probably be a lot more happy if he did.
If you have ever seen Calzaghe fight when he means it, like he did for Jeff Lacy, you should be a fan & you should buy this book. The definitive work on the Welsh wonder, though, has yet to be written.
A highly readable book from a great champion - By: wenallt1, 29 Aug 2007 No Ordinary Joe is the autobiography of Joe Calzaghe & takes his story up to April 2007 when he beat Peter Manfredo Jnr at the Millennium Stadium, Cardiff. At the time the book was written, Joe had been the WBO super-middleweight champion for 10 years making 20 successful defences, as well as gaining the IBF super-middleweight title in 2006 in a fight against Jeff Lacy described by the respected commentator Hugh Mcllvanney as "one of the greatest displays of superb technique, confidence & fighting intelligence a British boxer has delivered in a major contest." Despite his record, recognition had been slow coming to Joe before the Lacy fight. This is surprising, as he has a broad appeal capable of crossing over to a female fan base with the looks that led to the offer of an M & S modelling contract (which he declined) as well as being a devoted father & family man. The book is remarkably objective for an autobiography & Joe is able to come up with a number of reasons for his comparatively low profile: He came after the barnstorming Benn-Eubank-Collins years & boxing's move away from terrestrial television to Sky; he has been dogged by hand injuries; the fact that his talent scared off the biggest names; possibly it's the British inability to fully embrace winners but perhaps most of alll in a celebrity driven age, Joe has never been interested in the fame game. You get a clear idea from the book as to how Joe has developed as an athlete. He very courageously discusses how he was very badly bullied at school despite being a schoolboy boxing champion. This ended a reasonably promising academic performance & it could be that this intelligence was diverted away from academia to the ring. He acknowledges tensions in the relationship with his father & trainer, Enzo who clearly recognised his son's prodigious talent at an early age. There could have been more analysis of Enzo as his story is, in many ways, just as remarkable as he had no previous experience of boxing training. Although Enzo could see the talent, Joe's career was set back by a number of people who did not know how to handle it. So astonishingly the Wales ABA did not put him forward for the Barcelona Olympics qualifiers & whilst managed by Mickey Duff he was not being brought on sufficiently quickly. There are also some great anecdotes such as Joe's mounting discomfiture when Enzo decides verballly to have a go at Tyson. The forward by Sugar Ray Leonard is a little odd as it seems far more about Sugar Ray Leonard than about Joe but that's a minor quibble. Overalll it's a highly readable book from a great & modest champion.
