Joe Calzaghes win over Hopkins

It is a common phenomenon that a champions best wins can continue to apreciate after he retires.

That is why it usualy takes a few years for the dust to settle.

 

on paper it's certainly now his best win. it would previously have been lacy, then kessler now it's hopkins.

i haven't re-scored it yet but once i do i'll evaluate further.

 

I think Hopkins won that fight.

 

Absolutely.

It appears that Calzaghe won a close decision over the guy who is possibly 1 win from being the best 175er of this era.

On paper, its a Calzaghe win, to the majority of fans(See any poll) its a Calzaghe win, so he should get full credit for being the last to defeat Hopkins.

I still say unless Kessler goes on to really do something more, it remains Calzaghes sole great, A+ win. Hopkins beating Dawson would only enrich that.

JC's legacy as a true upper echelon fighter hinges quite a bit on his victory over BHop.

 

I don't think he won to be honest...

 

Calzaghe won the hit and not getting hit flashy stuff that casuals like to see, but Hopkins dominated the clinching(old school). Close fight.

 

A good question and one that I have thought of several times recently ... the answer is definitely yes .. and I feel Joe won it clean ...

 

i had joe winning 116-113 in an awful fight that i unfortunately attended. most point to this fight as the defining win in joe's career. has any fighter ever gotten so much credit for beating a 43 yr old fighter? remember hopkins lost 2 close fights to jermain taylor 3 yrs before calzaghe. how much credit should taylor get for those wins?

 

It was his best win the moment he got it, and I never really thought that was up for debate. Kessler is/was a very solid fighter, but he was never in Hopkins' class, whatever age. The problem is that Hopkins is, quite simply, not a great light heavyweight. He's a very, very good one, certainly, and is doing remarkable things for a man his age, but he is not a great fighter at the weight. Calzaghe's struggle to squeak by don't really impress, either. It's an excellent win if you feel he deserved that decision (which I do), but it can't really be called a great win.

 

I scored the fight to Hopkins by 4 points, and I don't view what Calzaghe achieved against a past-prime Bernard as superior in any way to how Jermain Taylor had performed against a better version of B-Hop.

 

Well...Hopkins won in my scorecard as well......

 

I scored it for Hopkins as well, however, it was very close and neither man really deserved to win. Calzaghe not because most of his punches weren´t landing and the only thing he did was throwing a lot. And Hopkins not for his acting and fouling.

If you think Joe C. won it certainly is his best win. Which says everything about him. Hopkins is a great fighter, a true atg but he was 43 years old and fought 2 weightclasses above his best division, he certainly is not a great lhw and what he did/does is only great because of his age. So, overall I don´t think that "win" is that great, borderline, perhaps only even a very good one.

 

I had Joe winning clearly despite Cortez reffing a pro-Hopkins fight and the overexaggerated reactions to the low-blows, which I thought was purely Hopkins looking for a way out of a fight he wasn't comfortable in. It was also Calzaghe's first LHW fight, and he was the traveling fighter. So it was a very good win to start with on a number of levels.

Joe didn't look great, but that was also about the worst Hopkins I've seen- it seems like they brought the worst out of each other, which is about the polar opposite of what should ideally happen when two very good fighters square off.

Calzaghe's win does look better as time goes on, but the real credit for the win should come from the context around it, with Hopkins sandwiching that loss with wins over Tarver, Wright, and Pavlik. That Hopkins is now still at the top of the scrap heap that is 175 says more about the flawed fighters in that division than anything, although it is certainly impressive that Hops can still even fight at that level.