Mungia is 43-0 right now. Gilberto Ramirez was 44-0 before he lost to Bivol. Yuri Boy Campas was 54-0. It doesnt mean much if you arent fighting the best. Calzaghe has 3 wins vs top 5 ring rated fighters. THREE. Its a joke that hes considered an ATG especially by UK people. I get it that the UK hasnt had many great boxers so he may be the best ever from the UK but hes ridiculously overrated. If Tyson Fury beats Usyk he surpasses Calzaghe as the best ever from the UK and pretty clearly. Lennox Lewis is Canadian.
How was Roy rated 6? He was so shot. Even counting these and a few other what does Calzaghe have around 10 wins vs top 10 OPP ?
Bob Fitzsimmons is the greatest ever fighter from the UK. If you consider Fitz to be from New Zealand, Jimmy Wilde is the greatest.
I agree he was shot, but he was rated #6 by the ring at LHW going into the Calzaghe fight. I think Calzaghe has: 2 x wins over the highest rated ring magazine fighter in the world - Hopkins and Kessler (Lacy was ranked #3 behind Joe and Kessler. At one point Joe was the #1 at SMW and had recently beaten the #2 and #3. 6 x wins over top #6 rated ring magazine rated fighters. 9 x wins over top #10 rated ring magazine rated fighters. I may have missed some. Even if not, that's not bad a guy who remained unbeaten all his career. Not an ATG resume, but not as bad as some make out.
Right that my whole point. He was a very good fighter but hes not an ATG to me. Hes like Kosta Tszyu or GGG to me. Actually would put those 2 ahead of Joe Calzaghe.
I'm not sure I would, but I agree he's broadly on that sort of level. If memory serves, all three got as high as #2 or #3 in the world p4p rankings. I'm ok with all three being described as extremely good, successful fighters, who fell short of having ATG resumes.
Excellently put. Regarding the Reid fight, i had RR winning by 2 rds, and JC definately should have rematched him, the fact he didn't speaks volumes imo.
Lewis, who I consider British, followed by Calzaghe. I typically wait until a fighters have been retired a few years before ranking then historically, though my feeling is Fury has some way to go to surpass either.
It’s easy to ask these questions without applying context though. James was fighting every other month around that time. He fought Tiberi about 9 weeks after he’d fought the great Mike McCallum. Toney wasn’t 100% fit or motivated for that fight. All credit to Joe for being a more dedicated athlete. But he was mostly fighting unknown WBO guys for the most part. Regarding Thadzi, James was unlucky there. Now let’s reverse this and ask some questions: Who did Joe fight who was comparable to the genius of Mike McCallum? Who did Joe fight who was comparable to a prime Roy Jones? To a prime Micheal Nunn? You’re talking about a guy who barely beat Robin Reid, sandwiched between Reid’s 2 losses to Thulani Malinga and Silvio Branco. A guy who only fought about 10 world level fighters in his entire career. A guy who sat on a low level belt for a decade, where he fought a guy called Mario Veit twice. Yes, Toney lost fights. But he had about 90, to Joe’s 46, who again was mostly low level opposition. Joe did not possess more ability than Toney. He doesn’t possess the resume of Toney. He doesn’t possess the wins of Toney. He never took the risks that Toney took. James Toney was a better fighter than Joe Calzaghe, irrespective of Joe’s zero. And let’s be honest here: A number of fighters could have got to 46-0, had they have followed the same timeline, where they’d have fought Joe’s competition at the time that he did. It wasn’t some amazing feat. Joe has a poor resume.
I don’t think so. Who did he beat as good as a prime Ward? Nobody. It would probably have played out similar to the Hopkins fight. Ward would have slowed him down on the inside. You can’t tell me that it would have been easy for Joe, when again, he barely beat Hopkins, he barely beat Reid and he’d had a tough out with Bika. Thats’s 3 guys, where 2 of them were much lesser fighters, and where all of them shared some stylistic similarities.