IT'S with great pleasure that I am finally able to talk about my next fight as a fact, after the confirmation that I WILL be facing Bernard Hopkins on April 19 in Las Vegas.

No longer will anyone be able to say, Joe Calzaghe is good but he's a stay at home fighter,' I will go to America and do the business, I can promise you that.

I've really got a great feeling about my date with destiny against Hopkins, I've always stated it's my ambition to be a two-weight world champion, but this is even better.

As undisputed super middleweight champion I feel I am well qualified to say what is a big fight and this is a huge one.

Sometimes people get totally carried away by the alphabet titles, we might not be fighting for a WBA or a WBO belt, but in many ways I think that's really refreshing.

Bottom line is that if you look at the pound-for-pound rankings this is the best super middleweight fighter in the world taking on the best light heavyweight in the world.

Also, one thing that no one seems to have picked up on is that this fight gives me a chance to make history.

I am The Ring magazine champion at super middleweight and old man Hopkins is The Ring magazine light heavyweight king.

His title will be on the line and I believe I would become the first fighter to be a Ring champion at two different weights.

A lot of my pals haven't forgiven me yet for announcing in my column a fortnight ago that the fight was set for April 12.

Many of my mates went straight onto the Internet to book their flights and I have had plenty of abuse I can tell you!

Obviously at the time I understood it to be true, but sorry again lads!

I have been doing press junkets all week on both sides of the Atlantic and this is as excited as I've ever been about a fight.

When I went to Vegas for the Ricky Hatton v Floyd Mayweather fight I really got the buzz. Vegas is the place to be involved in a big fight.

Everything is larger than life over there and the level of interest is huge.

There are shades of the Ricky Hatton build-up with Bernard Hopkins making himself the pantomime villain with his nonsense about not losing to a white boy.' I am quite happy to play the role of the good guy, right up until we step into the ring at the Thomas and Mack Center and I clean his clock good and proper.

I may be 36 but I think I still box like a 25-year old. Father Time is going to catch up on Hopkins, he's 43 and his best days are long gone.

Do you know what? I don't want to lose to a white boy either!

I don't want to lose, period. I've never been beaten; he's lost four times.

It doesn't matter if you are black, white, blue, green or yellow; Joe Calzaghe will beat you!

He's still a top quality fighter and one of the biggest - if not the biggest - names in the business though and it'll give me enormous satisfaction to show the American audience just how good I am.

The Thomas and Mack Center (apologies for the American spelling, it's a US building though!) will be absolutely rocking and I am thrilled by the choice of venue.

This is a proper arena, it holds more people than the big casinos do and it means more genuine fight fans will be there in person.

The problem with the casinos is so many of the tickets go to the high rollers' rather than genuine fight fans.

I hope to have a massive following from Wales for the fight, Americans love Mancunians now and next up is the Welsh invasion!

Indeed, I am really looking forward to Bernard coming over to Wales.

He thinks Philadelphia is a mean place, maybe he'll change his mind when he sees what people in the Valleys think of him!

Maybe we'll go for a night out in Cardiff or Newport as well, that'd be interesting!

Part of the build-up to the fight is going to include a Las Vegas press conference compered by Sly Stallone who is promoting his new Rambo movie.

I think I am going to the premiere, it's amazing that once again Stallone is part of the furniture for a Calzaghe fight.

He was a presence in the lead up to my hammering of Peter Manfredo; he's obviously a good luck charm!

I said this week that everything happens for a reason and maybe it was always meant to be that I wouldn't fight in America until the last year of my career.

I appreciate it all the more now and I hope lots of you will come along for the ride, it's going to be a bumpy one for Bernard Hopkins!