Get the latest Welsh rugby news sent straight to your inbox Sign up Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Invalid Email

It was late March in 1981 when Joe and Enzo Calzaghe first stepped through the door of a gym clad in tin sheet at the side of Newbridge Rugby Club.

Two decades later, and that little gym was established as one of the most revered bases in sport, even if Joe, one of the greatest boxers in history, joked he would get injured just by leaning on its walls.

But the driving force behind it had never thrown a competitive punch. He had, however, been a footballer, musician and a world-class boxing trainer who at one point had three world champions in his stable and boasted a 40-fight unbeaten record with his boxers between October 2005 and March 2008.

The best of them all, his son Joe, was undefeated in his 46 professional fights, spending more than a decade as world champion and securing his legacy with back-to-back victories over American greats Bernard Hopkins and Roy Jones Jnr. You can follow live tributes and reaction to Enzo's death here .

“Where I come from, in Sardinia, boys like me either became waiters, boxers or footballers. Well, I didn’t end up as any of them – although I’ve had a go at most,” he said in 2006.

(Image: Andrew James)

Born in 1949 in Sassari, a small city in north-west Sardinia, Enzo was just two when his father Joseph moved the family to Bedford, in Hertfordshire.

“I went to the same school as Joe Bugner (who once went the distance with Muhammad Ali),” said Enzo .

“He was in my brother’s class and his sister was in mine.”

While Enzo might not have stepped through the ropes, being foreign-born made it necessary for him to learn how to look after himself.

“When we were at home, my dad would get the gloves out and what he did with me brought me up learning the art of boxing," he said.

“At school, I was the ‘Eyetie’, always getting picked on because of where I came from, so what I learned from my dad came in useful.

“I never, ever used to fight, I would always box, and I dreamt of being a boxer.”

Video Loading Video Unavailable Click to play Tap to play The video will start in 8 Cancel Play now

But when he was 13, his father got the family together and asked how they would feel about moving back to Sardinia.

“I thought, ‘Sardinia? Yes!’ I’d only ever been there once. I thought it would be like going on holiday,” Enzo told the Western Mail in 2006.

Once the Calzaghes returned to the Mediterranean, Enzo got in with his mother’s side of the family, where football was the predominant sport. But, despite playing for the same team as Gianfranco Zola and being "brought up to be a footballer" he actually became a musician ("Such is life," he mused).

His first taste of performance was when his uncle Vicenzo got him to play bass in a band that was performing on a lorry as part of a saint’s day celebrations.

“I was terrified,” he said.

“It got to 9pm and we were called. There was eight of us in the band. I could hardly play and was so nervous I didn’t think I could even play a note.

“I told my uncle Vicenzo that I couldn’t do it, and he said, ‘You’ve got to!’ I said, ‘No uncle, I really can’t,’ so he said, ‘You have to!’”

The argument went on until Vicenzo got his way.

“I was shaking like a leaf. I’d learned two songs – one called Girl, and Michelle, by The Beatles. We must have played them 20 times. The crowd loved it.”

(Image: Andrew James)

Enzo became something of a star around Sardinia but at the age of 19 he was conscripted into the air force in Milan, where, describing himself as “a lucky git” he was drafted straight into the football team and “spent all my time playing football for the Milan air force”.

Leaving the air force two years later, he took up as a musician again in the hippy counter-culture that suited him just fine.

“It was a time when everyone was just packing up a bag and hitting the road, getting out, seeing the world. I spent two to three years playing squares in European towns and cities and I must have slept in every city in Europe. I lived everyone’s dream,” he said.

It was during this period he came to Cardiff and met Jacqueline, his wife and mother to his three children.

“I started a job as a cashier in Wimpy and the future Mrs Calzaghe was working as a waitress,” said Enzo.

“Jacqueline had long dark hair and was gorgeous. I fell for her and we married after a short while.”

Giving up life on the road in favour of more regular income, he worked as a waiter in Bournemouth and a cook in London while continuing to play music.

His bands, Foreign Legion and Burgundy, played as support acts for bands like the Barron Knights, Bucks Fizz and Edwin Starr.

It was while the couple was living in Hammersmith in 1972 that Joe was born. They also had two daughters, Sonia and Melissa and moved to Newbridge, where Jacqueline’s family came from.

When Joe was nine, Enzo took him to the nearby gym that would later secure its place in history.

Enzo said: “Joe always mucked about with boxing in our front room, I’d roll the carpet back and we’d get out the gloves. He loved boxing, but football was his first love.

“I got him a speedball, from Tesco or somewhere, when he was five, and he developed a great eye for contact.

“I waited until he was nine and then took him half a mile down the road to the gym. I saw [trainer] Paul Williams and said, ‘Joe wants to be a boxer’. He told Joe, ‘Off you go, then. Let’s see what you’ve got’. On the very first night Paul asked if he had done it before.”

Joe made his professional debut at Cardiff Arms Park on the Lewis-Bruno bill in 1993, prompting the South Wales Echo to remark: “Those punters who took their seats an hour or so before the big fight might one day make the boast in a slightly different context ‘I was there when Joe Calzaghe made his professional debut!’.”

By June 1995, Joe had won nine out of nine fights, seven in the first round and two in the second. He mastered and dominated his class from then until he retired undefeated in 2009 with a record of 46 wins and no losses.

Joe insisted on keeping his father as his trainer.

(Image: Richard Williams)

He wasn't the only one. In the famed gym (it moved to an industrial estate on the edge of Abercarn after the much-loved Newbridge gym was bulldozed in 2002) several other champion fighters were born.

In its pomp, it housed three world champions, earning Enzo The Ring Magazine Coach of the Year award in 2007.

Enzo also guided Enzo Maccarinelli to the WBO cruiserweight crown and Gavin Rees to the WBA light-welterweight title, while his stable also included former Commonwealth champion Bradley Pryce, former WBU champion Gary Lockett and a young Nathan Cleverly, who became British, European, Commonwealth and world light-heavyweight champion.

(Image: Huw Evans Picture Agency) (Image: Liz Pearce)

The close-knit stable of fighters cared as much about their gym buddy’s career as they did about their own, Joe saying in 2007: “I wouldn’t be able to achieve what I have without the help of Team Calzaghe.”

The father and son completed a Calzaghe double when Enzo won the 2008 BBC Sports Personality Coach of the Year crown and Joe scooped the main award.

In 2010, Enzo said he was keen to spend more time with his family, and announced he was taking a “prolonged rest” from boxing that he was unlikely to come back from.

“I brought Joe up from birth to the birth of his boxing. He understands exactly what I want,” Enzo had said a few years earlier.

“I am a very hardcore trainer. I have nurtured 48 titles. I know my job and I know what I’m doing. I’m not there as a cheerleader.

“As a trainer, I’ve been honoured to be there to be part of the Joe Calzaghe story. As a father, what more could you want?”