Is Joe Calzaghe underrated? Yes or No?

I'd say no. He was a good fighter, now largely forgotten

 

Agreed, many of Roy Jones' opponents were pretty unexciting, from Middle to HW. However they were probably more familiar to US audiences. Thomas Tate and Vinny Paz were glossy names but well passed their sell by date and I find it hard to be inspired by Thornton, Brannon, Lucas, Frazier, Hall, Harmon, Telesco etc, no disrespect them.

 

Yeah but beating slightly pre prime Hopkins and prime Toney better than anything Joe did

 

Yes I agree!

 

This was a small window in the divisions history where America was not producing good enough SMW fighters. The belts were in Europe from 1997 till 2007 because there wasn’t American super middleweights that were good enough to go there and win a belt.

Calzaghe ran out of American challengers and champions to beat. Having beat Lacy, Brewer and Mitchell then He moved up to take on more Americans in America . He couldn’t have done more than he did.

the skill level and talent was not greater at SMW during the time that Calzaghe had belts. Check the timeline. Where were the American SMW in 1997-2007?

 

You misunderstood. The talent was in america across multiple divisions.
All those guys racking up defence after defence in Europe were never good enough to make the pound for lists. None of them because they were defending against sub par opposition. Only Calzaghe cracked the pfp list after 10 years.
The division of 168 was lagging well beind other marquee divisions.
When Calzaghe came to the ring some opposition were called mystery men because nobody knew anything about them. 175 offerd better fights against more skilled fighters for Joe but he didn't move up till the last minute.

 

American dominance drops off at HW sometimes. It’s not all through all the divisions most of the time. Sometimes it is. Sometimes it isn’t. However, Calzaghe must be measured within the division he fought at. He was the best there.

some were some weren’t. Mostly not. But there shouldn’t always be a representative of each division on the P4P list.

check the defences Jones had at LH. Nothing more special than Joe really.

By the time he cracked the list, it was more on life time achievement than how good he still was at that time. And sometimes that’s just how it is. Joe was probably better in the days he did not crack the list.

Not really. All in all the middleweight division wasn’t that good from 1997-2007 either.

 

calzaghe would have beat that version of Toney easily and would have been a favourite against the green Hopkins

 

He fought and defeated Eubank. And he defeated Kessler, who was in the Super Six.

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I said no because British and specifically Welsh peoples always talk about this champion.

So he is famous in all Europe I think.

 

How were wins against Starie, Bika and Jones great though?

How was the Eubank win great? Eubank took the fight on 11 days notice, where he'd not fought at SMW for 2 years, or won there in 3 years.

Joe himself said that Roy was shot before they fought.

 

His resume wasn't that strong though was it.

The U.S. fans had hardly seen him before he fought Lacy and Kessler.

Simply because he mostly fought non world level guys in Europe.

 

Yes. Joe is underrated.
On the other hand, his career is just as well, if not better, managed than Lennox Lewis's.

 

The 21 defences isn't impressive, when you consider:

1. He had a low level WBO belt.

2. More than half of those defences came against non world level fighters.

 

I would say that Liam Smith was comparable to Veit, Sheika and Starie.

To my knowledge, Joe only fought around a dozen world level fighters in his entire 15 year career.