Now who wins prime Calzaghe or prime Ward?

Here is Kieran Mulvaney of ESPN (at the time, at least) making my same argument for Calzaghe over Hopkins [he predicated Calzaghe would beat Hopkins] as I am making for Calzaghe over Ward.

http://www.espn.com/sports/boxing/news/story?id=3355591

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Which, of course, didn't happen. As Mulvaney points out:

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Hopkins would later go on to win multiple world titles as his career continued. He could still fight, just not against someone of Calzaghe's workrate and stamina.

Just one more piece of evidence in my dossier here of why Ward could not defeat Calzaghe had they fought.

As was the case with Hopkins, Calzaghe would "overwhelm" Ward with volume and "indefatigable" offense.

Hopkins tried to slow Joe down, and he got out-landed by 105 punches over the length of the fight.

Joe really was that good. I've seen many, many fighters over the decades and he's way up on the list of the greats.

 

No serious analysis? I pinpointed habits and tendencies and skills of each fighter displayed in some of their most important bouts. That's far more serious than "LOOK AT THESE FLAWED PUNCHSTATS THAT GIVE NO CONTEXT". Boxing is a skills sport and styles have strengths and weaknesses. Your posts have 0 substance. "Calzaghe has a high work rate" means **** all. Work rate doesn't tell you how hittable a fighter is, how they set up their shots, what they're vulnerable to, etc. You seem incapable of that sort of analysis so you best just quit contesting arguments with nothing and fawn over crappy stats on your own.

 

Calzaghe barely scraped by Hopkins, therefore he'd beat a far more athletic but just as skilled Ward in his prime? Yeah that makes sense.

Volume over everything! Boxing be damned, let's just have them all hit a bag as quick as they can and give the highest volume puncher all the belts.

 

^ He did not barely scrape by Hopkins. My gosh, what in the world? This is why it's hard for me to take this stuff seriously. Also, I can do a variety of analytical methods, but objective (stats) is good when discussing matters that aren't easily resolved. It takes the bias out of things.

Here's how the rounds look in that Calz-BHop fight on the cards:

9-3 rounds
8-4 rounds
6-6 rounds --------> outlier

And that's without the 10-8 Hopkins round 1 that turns to Joe's round if he's not knocked down. It's worse then, as I pointed out earlier in the thread.

Also, Lederman had it 9-3 rounds.

As I mentioned earlier, as well, only corrupt judging or poor scoring could make Calzaghe-Hopkins or Calzaghe-Ward look close. Otherwise, it's a wipeout. And, as also stated earlier, Ward is not knocking Calzaghe down. Which puts him even more in the hole in terms of scoring.

Now, just for fun, I decided to go back and watch a fight from when Calzaghe was earlier in his career to try to get a sense of his workrate when he was younger.

Calzaghe was 30 years old (still maybe slightly beyond his prime) when he faced Charles Brewer (32 years old) in 2002. Here's the video:

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Do your own "punch count" and see how many punches Calzaghe threw in Round 1 (all I watched; starts at about 8:40 into the video). Against a puncher (probably would throw even more against a non-puncher like Ward). Then try to tell yourself that Ward is going to defeat that level of work rate.

 

The vast majority of boxing fans will agree that the Hopkins fight was close and competitive. Lederman is a notoriously biased judge who favors the come-forward fighter. His scorecards are consistently off base.

Stop saying punch stats are "objective" and offering nothing else. Nobody cares about your flawed stats. If you can't break down the multiple facets of a boxer's style then don't bother trying to argue about their potential dynamics against someone else. I laid out arguments about their style, if you can't rebut them with substantive observations then be quiet.

 

Ward was out punched and outboxed in Kovalev 1.

 

I had him winning by a point in a close fight. Stats are irrelevant to scoring round to round. In any case I'm talking about the rematch.

 

^ The Hopkins-Calzaghe fight was not close, as evidenced by two of the cards and the punch stats.

As I said, that's probably about as good of an outcome Ward could muster against Calzaghe (what Hopkins did). It was Joe's first fight in the USA and he got the "American cooking" judges treatment from Byrd. It was also Joe's first fight at LHW.

Still, he won at least 8 rounds on two of the cards, outlanded Hopkins by more than 100 shots and just flat-out wore Hopkins down over the bout. Wore him out. And I like Hopkins.

This is what Ward's fate would be. Except he would not knock Calzaghe down.

Joe is a freak. I forgot how much the case that was until looking at the Brewer video. He just sets a pace nobody can match and drags you into exhaustion as the bout moves on. He can keep up the pace, and you can't. So he just racks rounds.

Again, just to be clear -- I'm not saying "Ward sucks." I've given Ward his due plenty of times. But Ward isn't Calzaghe, and he's not seriously challenging Calzaghe.

In order to really challenge Calzaghe, you have to at least be able to punch. If you can't punch hard, you have no shot at all.

Ward can't punch, and his work rate simply isn't high enough to get the job done.

 

Damn! That guy looks like a giant next to Cal.

 

Im glad you brought up Brewer. He ,like a lot of the other names Calzaghe defended against were coming off losses and in some cases only had to beat to journeyman to earn their shot at Joe.

Brewer had been stopped in 3 rounds by Antun Echols

Byron Mitchel had just lost to Ottke.

Woodhall had already lost to Marcus Beyer.

Reid came off a loss to Sugar Malinga and lost again to Branco right after Calzaghe. Both handled him far easier than Calzaghe did.

Evans Ashira was coming off a stoppage loss to Maselino Masoe. Ashira took Joe the distance

Eubank hadn't had a good win in 3 years and was fighting non televised bouts at 175 when he boiled back down to 168 on short notice. His last fight at 168 before he fought Calzaghe was a loss.

Calzaghe himself wouldn't enter into the ring with Glen Johnson 3 times while at the same time telling Frank how he wanted to fight Fremann Barr.

If he wouldn't fight Johnson , Pavlik , Dawson and Tarver , in what world would he fight Ward?

If Joe's fight against Brewer means he'd beat Ward , then i guess Ward would have no chance against Antwun Echols either.

 

griffin? he showed he could beat him easy.

Whats wrong with you, pretending a well accepted definition of ESB is wrong and that you are right? I get it, the whole of ESB is the one thats wrong and not you, yeah?

 

I have no view on that, but I will refer youy to my original point, which you have just pretended didnt exist and which you are trying to avoid admitting you were wrong about. why you doing that? not a problem, just curious why u ducked.

 

Ward had Bute, Dirrell, Kessler and Froch, so it wasn't a bad division.

The point is: Joe spent 14 years in a division where he had to starve himself to make weight, when he could have targeted better fighters for recognised titles instead.

 

I never said Griffin was special. But along with the likes of Hill and Reggie Johnson, they were recognisable names and better than the likes of Reid etc.

Of course those guys you mentioned wouldn't have gone to Wales. Why would they have? Joe would have had to make concessions like every other U.K. fighter of the same era had to. The likes of: Bruno, Benn, Naz and Hatton etc, all went over. But Joe didn't want to travel. Yet if he'd have been willing to do so and he'd have made an impression, he could have gotten people interested in those fights, and he could have moved up the rankings, that could possibly have landed him a mandatory position.

If you watched Joe's career in the late 90's-early 00's, he was constantly talking about fighting recognisable names and wanting career defining fights. Yet he wouldn't really push for any of that to happen.

The truth is: He was more than content to repeatedly defend his WBO belt, whilst trying to kid to the public that he wanted to fight the best.

 

Failed the test on your homework post?

Ha! I shredded it to pieces and you never replied.

Here was my response:

I don't know enough?

Ha! Okay.

I'll leave you with your stats.

I know they make you happy.

Back in the real world, Joe struggled with Robin Reid and a 43 year old Bernard Hopkins. Those are the facts.

If you think that compubox data is evidence to support the theory that Ward wouldnt even have given Joe a competitive fight, then you're right, debating with me is a complete waste of time.

Put your time to better use by actually studying the styles and attributes of different fighters. Lay off the stats, and spend more time actually watching some fights.

Maybe we can have an in-depth, objective debate in the future, once you've wisened up.