Could Joe Calzaghe still be undefeated if he fought Roy Jones Jr's opponents?

he didnt fight roy jones and/or bernard hopkins when it mattered

like you said, both jones and hopkins ruled weak divisions and it would have been as easy as it gets for calzaghe to cross the pond, beat ranked contenders, get an international fanbase and the interest of the networks, and seal the deal

instead, he called them out repeatedly from wales, waited until they hit their 40's, lost their titles, and got the fight signed from there

the hopkins win is probably calzaghe's best career win followed by kessler - but he still avoided them in their prime and probably because he'd have been beaten by both

 

exactly.

you cant ask 'who didnt he fight' when all he did is stay in a safety zone in a fledgling new division with the an up till the mid2000s unknown version of the world title (with the exception of kessler). This is a VERY good acheivement for a minor title holder or a euro champion, for instance, its excellent. But its a little weak for a HOFer, and its downright abysmal for a ATG. AS long as you arent trying to shoehorn him into the latter category you can get away with it.

What you need to ask is why didnt he fight another high risk fight beyond or before kess?

Theres clearly no double standard going on. Roy, winnning from LMW up to HW (HW, mother****er noone has done that in 100 years!). Hopkins, undisputed MW champ, not the unknown title champ. ****ing MILES above Calzaghe, you''d be insane to delude yourself there was a double standard there. Its a clear cut difference. If Joe had tried to do more, he'd be alongside them, but he actively chose not to. Fair play, Ruiz would have killed Joe.

So there is an excellent reason why you can say he might very well lose to some of these fighters, because if you never tried, then you'd never know if you could do it. And thats the same as NOT DOING IT.

'Undefeated' is a **** reason to quote. Yes it means Joe had the sense to manage his career well and has a good long term athlete mindset. But LOTS and LOTS of fighters are undefeated till they start to step up it up in earnest. If they never stepped up more than once, they'd all be undefeated too. And joe only stepped up once or maybe twice at a stretch.

 

@ Holdmybeer - Double standards again!!

I don't remember Hopkins or Jones fighting Calzaghe either?? Don't remember those guys travelling either!! Those fights would've sold out stadiums in the UK!! Can't remember either of those guys trying to make the fight either. And you could say he needed them more than they needed him, but frankly up until Tito B-Hops' 10 years reign at middleweigh stinks the house out!

 

What does the belts have to do with how good you are. He fought shite at MW and you tar JC with teh brush of not stepping up and fighting better ooponents

 

You seem to love the double standards quote, yet you forget very quickly that you are comparing unified and/or multi-weight and/or major title holding champions with someone who held the unknown, unwanted WBO title. Do you know what double standard means?

Plainly if you were roy or bhop in 2002, some guy with an unknown title in wales would barely raise your eyebrow let alone pulse, just like noone cares about the IBA supercruiserweight title today. You've not heard of that title till now either? exactly.

 

i just told you why its not a double standard

selling out a stadium doesnt hold a candle to PPV sales, and i also told you that a fighter not fighting on the biggest stage of all isnt going to fight the best in the world unless he takes the same sort of chances that higher profile fighters already have

it doesnt matter how good b-hop looks doing what he does, if he's the champ then he's a wanted man. this isnt 'arturo gatti popcorn-make the fans happy' thread - its a savvy ring general who dominated his division, and even after tito muscled his way to a title shot, put on a boxing masterclass when tito was the betting favourite

this is the first post since we started debating that you didn't want to listen to what i'm saying to you - doesnt bother me if you dont agree just so long as you read what i'm saying and react to it - just prove me wrong now and dont fall into a defensive shell because you dont want to believe that what i'm saying isn't true

 

He could hild every piece of metal in the world, it wouldn't make him a better fighter or give him a better resume or make him have stepped up and taken more risks, when his list of opponents undisputedly sucks!!!

Hopkins is great IMO - beter than JC p4p etc etc, but you cannot crticize Calzaghe for the things you have and then defend Hopkins when he didn't do them either.

 

course you can. in what world is unified undisputed champ defending poor but a string of unknown WBO title defendin is ATG? No wonder noone good was properly interested in fighting Calzaghe, they'd have got laughed down for taking the fight.

Obviously, not saying Cal is bad, but to try comparing him to an ATG is crazy. HOF for number of title defences is fair for Joe, thats all he gets. You get what you put in for boxing, and just one weight wbo title until you are ready to retire is great for a minor champion, but poor show for someone trying to claim they are lgendary. Course WBO today holds more water.

 

:yikes To say Joe Calzaghe was a very good fighter but never proved deserving of the title "special" means that you are full of "blind hatred"...


...I think you've completely lost touch with reality mate. What an utterly, utterly ludicrous and completely indefensible/unjustifiable piece of infantile nonsense to come out with. :-(


The best prime fighter that Joe Calzaghe ever convincingly beat was Mikkel Kessler. I don't consider him special because of this. He never beat any HOF-class fighters in their prime, nor convinced me that he beat any HOF-class fighters ever. Thus, I can't say he proved to be 'special', which is a term I'd reserve for guys who either proved it in acid test fights with prime HOFers (eg Erik Morales beating Barrera & Pacquiao), or achieved some earth-shattering things (eg Wilfred Benitez winning world title at 17).


But because this doesn't square with your own opinion, it is relegated to the status of the wildly irrational, corrupted, meaningless "blind hatred"?

What a joke. :verysad

 

Wow. I can't compete with this type of in-depth, rational, stylistic analysis of a hypothetical boxing match. You've got every base covered it seems, considered every facet and angle of this one. I especially admire your study of Johnson's fights at different weight classes to the one under discussion. I had never twigged before that the key to elite-level boxing debate was to work out who lost the least fights, and immediately declare them the certain winner of all possible match-ups with people who lost more times than them, irrespective of weight class or career trajectory. Are you Eddie Futch's descendent per chance?

 

Hopkins and Toney would have put a serious beating on Calslappy, so you don't have to go far at all to say **** NO, and if you think otherwise you're either a nuthugging welshman or an idiot.

 

Zis ist possibly zie worst poster in esb history. Bernie ist a blinkered fanboy wis a giant **** svinging from zie forehead.

 

Any minnion zat believes zie gatekeeper Glen Johnson defeats zie great Joeseph Calzaghe ist an absolute ****ing disgrace to zie esb forum. You need your fragile head sent to zie punch resistance labroratories in Lichtenstein where vie will conduct specialist tests on zie freaky lantern jaw you own :rofl

 

Wow, I see what you did there, you know what you're really witty!! :good

So now you give me the stylistic breakdown that makes a guy that didn't just lose a couple of close fights to some really world class fighers, but lost a quarter of his fights at that point to pretty much B level fighers likely to beat somebody who never lost and fought better opponents than Johnson lost to (and KOed at least 1) Yes, I know styles makes fighs etc etc, and Fighter A beat fighter B and didn't lose as many as figther C are not true measures, but in the case of Glen Johnson, who was a very solid good figher and that's all it doesn't need a boxing expert or a whole lot of breaking down to suggest that Johnson was not on Calzaghe's level and could not (and didn't) ever achieve what Calzaghe did.