I don't think Rick got people into boxing or sport at all, quite the opposite. He endorsed fryups and ****-ups.
This You see the same types today who see a forty year old Hatton who is a father of teenagers by the way, smashed off his tits falling over in a tenerefe club surrounded by kids not much older than his children, and what's their reaction "what a mad lad" "he's just having fun" It's like come the **** on, I'm a decade his junior and I am long past my years of acting like that.
I m gonna get flamed for this but i say joe calzaghe. Joe was a very good fighter obviously...but overrated imo and his reluctance to test himself worked out brilliantly for him whereas hatton tested himself and paid the price for it. Both imo we,re about the same level. Just had different main attributes. Calzaghe was the better boxer but hatton was better at working guys over. Calzaghe was lucky his division wasn,t great. Plus his biggest wins we,re against older guys in eubank, roy jones and hopkins. Calzaghes stamina was incredible. He was always gonna come out well against older fighters even if he was the same age or even older himself when fighting them. His other big wins we,re kessler and lacy. Lacy turned out to be not great and always felt kessler was slightly overrated. No one agrees because he was a solid hard man but in terms of boxing he wasn,t all that great at anything. Good yeah just not elite or anything like that. You could write the same about hatton regarding tyzsu etc. Still feel joe and ricky we,re about the same level. Both great fighters tbf. Just not quite elite level. But probably not all that far off it. Joe was slightly lucky no one like pacman and mayweather we,re kicking about his division st the time. Taking nothing away from him tho...he was a great fighter. Just dont see him as good ss people make him out to be nowadays.
Calzaghe was a part-timer, popped up once a year on Sky Sports 3 at Cardiff Ice Rink against someone from Mongolia
Yes I remember at the time of that there was uproar, but they brushed it under the rug, Steve Bunce was like "yes it was a bad call but these things happen, now on to the next fight" lol. When you consider all of Joshua's popularity was really built on the back of that ill gotten medal it's even worse. They also stole the gold off Cammarele though that one was closer AJ did not win that either.
On here probably Saunders. The undisputed king of ‘fights to his opponents level’ performances demonstrated only by battering the utterly one dimensional Lemieux. Taken by his (tiny) fanbase to mean that because Canelo and Golovkin are far better than Lee and Eubank and Akavov, and Saunders struggles with the latter, that’s why he has a great chance of beating the former. Historically Khan was clearly very talented but was never in a million years going to have some unbeaten long term record like a few suggested.
A few years ago some people were talking about Ricky Burns as one of Scotland's greatest ever fighters. He's had a nice career, but seriously just **** off. To be fair he doesn't always get that much respect, but similar to Duke McKenzie his achievements get inflated for winning fractions of championships in divisions a few lbs apart.
Whilst Calzaghe may not have had a Mayweather or Pacquaio in his division there were very solid opponents in and around his division which, in the long term, would have done a lot to cement his legacy and given him a better chance to showcase his talent. It's like I say with Lennox Lewis; nobody thinks he's great because he beat David Tua or Michael Grant or Andrew Golota. But he pretty much beat all those type of opponents and there's not that many left who you can say 'well, he should have fought him.' Bowe obviously but Bowe ducked him. With Calzaghe, nobody is saying Tarver or Woods or Pavlik on their own are career defining fights. But imagine if he'd beaten Woods to become a two weight world champion in a big domestic fight when he was busy faffing around slapping Peter Manfredo. And then imagine if rather than the corpse of Roy Jones he beat the undefeated and seemingly dominant Pavlik. And instead of another Ashira/Mkrtchyan/Pudwill/McIntyre/Sobot/Salem he had been really pushed for fights against the likes of Johnson or Beyer. He should have had a miles better record than he did for a man of his talent.
Does that make Joshua overrated as a pro though? I may be giving people too much credit, but I don't think Joshua has been put forward as some kind of ATG amateur, and at the time it was acknowledged that he was very lucky to come away with gold. A lot of the narrative was about how well Joshua was able to mix it at that level with limited experience, rather than him being that great at the Olympics. Fair point though that Gold was integral to the marketing of AJ, and his career would have looked different if Savon had got the verdict.
I think a lot of that gets overshadowed as soon as they go pro to be honest. Joshua could have emerged from nowhere and was always going to be massive.
Lot of variables involved. To support that you could use Tyson for example, who missed out on the Olympics altogether but fast-tracked to the big-time faster than any of the Class of 84. With Joshua, the gold medal and tapping into the London 2012 euphoria was a springboard for the pros. It gave him an existing profile and marketability, and it was a case of building from there. That isn't to say that they couldn't have found another angle to sell him to the public, but it's a different route and takes a bit more creativity. There's a lot to be said though for the cream rising theory. Using Harrison as an example, if the fighter hasn't got it the gold medal ceases to have any meaning after a point, and it's not like Mayweather, Pacquaio, Canelo etc needed gold medals to shift PPVs.
