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Here follows a purely personal list of the all-time Top Five British super middleweights:

1. Nigel Benn (WBC champion 1992-96, nine successful defences): If a Brit ever found himself alone in some foreign warzone, pinned down by enemy fire, he could not possibly feel happier than were the Dark Destroyer to appear at his side and say: "Let's 'ave 'em!" In Britain, Benn is loved in a way that the more statistically successful Joe Calzaghe never could be, but this isn't just a popularity contest. Benn is my No. 1 because he travelled to Italy to win his title, because he would have defeated Chris Eubank in their rematch were it not for a point deduction and because of the way he fought back from the brink of defeat to overcome the fearsome Gerald McClellan in the most brutal fight I have ever witnessed. A man's fighter and a champion in every sense of the word.

2. Steve Collins (WBO champion 1995-97, seven successful defences): Spotted the deliberate mistake yet? Of course, Collins is Irish and this is a British Top Five, but I'm letting him in simply to give him a little competition -- he'd be Ireland's Top 10 super middleweights all by himself. Looking back, it's hard to read Collins accurately. He scored two victories over Eubank by playing mindgames with him -- psyching him out with talk of his having been hypnotized to feel no pain and that sort of stuff; he beat a very faded and very disinterested Benn twice; and finally he would relinquish the WBO belt on the verge of a potentially tough defence against the young contender Calzaghe. If you can make sense of that, good luck to you, but I can't. He was good but to this day I'm not sure how good. However, his victories over the leading British super middles of his day demand respect.

3. Chris Eubank (WBO champion 1991-95, 14 successful defences): Like today's leading British super middleweight Calzaghe, it could be argued that Eubank is a numbers man more than an achiever, but the Brighton Braggart put his backside on the line far more often than the man who would eventually defeat him for the vacant WBO title and he was willing to travel in defence of his belt -- and against worthy challengers such as Graciano Rocchigiani. But there's a lot of padding on Eubank's record and it's possible that winning the WBO super middleweight title was the worst thing that ever happened to him because in doing so he inflicted serious and life-altering injuries on his opponent, Michael Watson, and Eubank was never the same fighter again. Always a competitor, he appeared to lack, for want of a better term, a killer instinct after that fight outdoors at Tottenham Hotspur's football arena in north London. His competitive edge had been significantly dulled forever, which makes it all the more amazing that he reigned as long as he did.

4. Joe Calzaghe (WBO champion 1997-2007, 20 successful defences, IBF champion 2006, one successful defence: In terms of numerical supremacy, Calzaghe's long undefeated reign tops the lot. But it also works against him because having reigned for so long and defended his title so many times, surely a true world champion would have wanted to test himself against the major rivals of his era -- Sven Ottke, Marcus Beyer, Anthony Mundine … And the fact that none of these could be categorized as a great fighter underlines what I perceive to be an underlying conservatism in Calzaghe's career. This is probably best exemplified by the list of opponents he faced between the first suffered knockdown of his career, versus Byron Mitchell in June 2003, and his win over Jeff Lacy in March 2006. Are you ready for this? Mger Mkrtchian, Kabary Salem, Mario Veit (already KO'd in one by Calzaghe) and Evans Ashira. Any surprise that Calzaghe went 4-0 in that near three-year period? A fast food champion compared to the meat and potatoes of the fighters I have rated above him.

5. Robin Reid (WBC champion 1996-97, three successful defences): By law he should change his name to "The Curious Case of Robin Reid." He wins his title by stopping Vincenzo Nardiello in Milan and loses it with barely an argument against Sugarboy Malinga in London the following year. But Reid's best work was done in a pair of subsequent world title challenges, where he became the only man ever to make one judge award a decision against Calzaghe and when he was robbed by criminal judging and even more sinister refereeing against Sven Ottke in Germany. An Olympic silver medallist, Reid was over the hill by the time he challenged Jeff Lacy in Tampa two years ago, yet still he features in a British title challenge to up-and-comer Carl Froch in Nottingham on the Friday after Calzaghe-Mikkel Kessler. An enigma indeed.

Glyn Leach is the editor of Boxing Monthly.