opinion on joe calzaghe?

Top ten p4p of his generation. No power bit of a slapper. Got a lot of favorable treatment and British stoppages from refs. His undefeated record stinks like all undefeated records of protection and cherry picking. His two best wins came against formerly great fighters five or six years after their primes. Massively overrated by British fans. Possibly the best fighter to grace super middleweight.

 

No 1 at 168 ever imo, most adaptable fighter of his generation. Changed his style to more accumulation than boxer/puncher down to bad hands, really bad hands. An atg easily

 

lol, hows he overated by the British then ??? You cant overate the best at his weight ever. Not a dig btw

 

Exceptional. Like all greats, they have bad performances in their careers too !

 

Zaggers was exceptional. He beat the who's who at his weight. And he gave a drilling to Mrs Gee.

 

Slapper with very high output.

 

One of the best fighters of his generation and one of the best fighters ever from the UK. Fast hands, good power (before his hands became an issue), iron chin, insane work rate, good boxing skills, smart, adaptable, superb and very under rated footwork. An ATG for sure.

But his resume doesn't match his ability. He burst onto the scene with a bang with the win over Eubank but his career kind of fizzled out for a long time after that. A combination of a lack of a marketable rival at SMW who was willing to face him, some poor career decisions and injuries at inconvenient times saw his career falter and not match the hype that surrounded him early on.

Luckily he got a couple of ambitious title holders in Lacy and Kessler near the end to finally unify against and then the Hopkins fight. He came good in the end but overall I think he under achieved if anything.

 

Read no ordinary Joe

 

I'm British and that's a fair summary.

 

good post

 

Pretty much sums his career up. He was badly promoted too, in my view...

 

I think Warren and Enzo Calzaghe were banging their heads against a wall at times, as much as the not so good promoting. Joe didn't want to travel is my only knock on him !

 

Because the weightclass is all of thirty years old and it's been a wasteland for most of that period. It's hard to say which is the worst weightclass in history Cruiserweight, Super Middleweight, or Minimumweight. Cruiserweight had Holyfield and Usyk. Super Middle has had Calzaghe and Ward. Minimumweight has had Ricardo Lopez, Roman Gonzalez, and Ivan Calderon. Every other weight class can boast of more and better fighters. Being the tallest midget is an accomplishment but one that is sure to be eclipsed in time. Some of the British fans around here act like he's the greatest fighter of all time when his resume barely warrants top 100 recognition. He's probably not even the best British boxer in history. Jimmy Wilde, Benny Lynch, Ted Lewis, Bob Fitzsimmons, Freddie Welsh, Jim Driscoll, Jack Berg, etc.

 

He had the same issue most champions seem to have, they seem to think why should they have to travel. He was just born in the wrong time period because if he was Champion now that UK is dominant no one would mind him not travelling, same for people like Wilder and Ward who get critised now for not travelling much, if they had been champions 10 years ago when America was dominant there would have been much less fuss.