MARK STANIFORTH

Joe Calzaghe might shrug off the superlatives which will come his way after he beat Bernard Hopkins to reign concurrently as world No.1 at two different weights, but he will rightly now be feted as the finest British fighter in history.

Talk of legendary status throughout the pre-fight hype had emanated solely from the mouth of the veteran Philadelphian, whose graceless refusal to accept this fifth defeat suggested he will head for the Hall of Fame a bitter man.

Calzaghe, meanwhile, will soar happily back home to his quiet life in the south Wales valleys, emerging again only for the fight or fights big enough to enhance his already extraordinary legacy.

Calzaghe's 45th consecutive victim was unlike any of his others. As expected, the former world middleweight champion tried every trick in the book to drag his opponent into the kind of gnarly fight he thrives upon so much.

Hopkins, a remarkable athlete with one of the hardest heads in the game, gave no credit to his opponent afterwards, instead insisting his relatively unblemished features somehow proved that the verdict should have gone his way.

His lack of generosity slightly soured a showdown between two undoubted modern-day superstars which, while it rarely rose above a messy, close-quarters affair, possessed enough sheer raw excitement to do its lofty billing justice.

For a man who has always shunned the cult of celebrity, Calzaghe didn't do too badly. Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Whitney Houston were among the A-listers watching on from the ringside VIP rows.

And the trans-Atlantic backing of almost 10,000 Welsh supporters - who, to their credit, allowed the US national anthem to pass in dignified silence - is of equal testament to Calzaghe's belated, burgeoning popularity. Finally, the credit has come. It is not just for his lightning punches and fast-paced style, but for the kind of heart he showed when he clambered off the canvas after the first-round shocker intent simply on turning the fight back in his favour.

Hopkins, who has feasted on so many southpaws in the course of his stellar career, tried everything to halt the shift in momentum towards his opponent, including exaggerating the effect of an almost non-existent 10th round low blow.

But if Hopkins expected Calzaghe, fighting for the first time across the Atlantic on his 175lbs debut, to submit to his roughhouse tactics, the wily Executioner' was to prove sadly mistaken.

If anything, Calzaghe was a little too harsh on himself after the fight when he seemed to suggest that he had not fought at his best and that the manner of his win was not entirely satisfactory. If there is more to come, we are in for a treat. As a spectacle it may have lacked explosive, knockout thrills but as a tactical triumph it was up there on a level which any purist would appreciate.

Calzaghe's possible future opponent Roy Jones, a world champion at four different weights, admitted his own opinion of Calzaghe had risen significantly after viewing the fight from ringside. There is, according to Jones, now only Floyd Mayweather between the Welshman and that coveted status as the world's best pound-for-pound fighter today.

Jones is right. What Calzaghe should do now is learn from the mistakes made by the Floridian, and protect the place in history he has earned by resisting the temptation to fight on too long.

A tumultuous homecoming against Jones at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff next year would provide the near-perfect ending he deserves to a career which sometimes scarcely threatened to hit such heights.

But Calzaghe is the first to concede that the urge for just one more big fight might prove too much. That is hardly surprising while he is still fighting as well as he did on Saturday.

Whenever and however the end eventually comes, it must not eclipse the magnitude of what Calzaghe achieved in Las Vegas on Saturday night. Champions like him do not come around too often. Indeed they seldom come around at all.