Hopkins vs. Calzaghe: Punch By Punch

Hopkins wins 9 rounds to 3! Of course! Why did I ever think it was so close.

 

But they shouldn't be.

He did, so he should have got the decision.

Good job you were never scoring a Floyd Mayweather Jr fight or a Pernell Whitaker fight or we might have got some very strange scoring.

I think you need to revise what you think this term means. This is not something which can be given a "score" during one performance.

Wrong. Or they shouldn't be scorers then. Unless the ref deducts a point, this is utterly irrelevant to the scoring of a round.

Yes they were. He knocked Calzaghe flat on his arse in round one, and at the end of one of the mid-late rounds (8 maybe? I can't remember) Calzaghe was reeling just as the bell went.

They didn't take him out of his comfort zone at all, Hopkins was welcoming the way the fight was going, he believed his nullifying of Calzaghe's attacks and his own precision punching were seeing him win on the scorecards, he was confident. All Calzaghe's attacking did was show that Hopkins is the more skilled fighter, showed that Calzaghe did not have the variety or the weaponry to penetrate his defence.

The only thing, the only thing Calzaghe was getting points for was moving his arms. The judges scored for workrate/activity/quantity, if they scored for quality/skill/effectiveness then Hopkins would have got the decision. Joe was outskilled. The only reason Hopkins lost was that at 43 he could not match Joe's workrate/activity/quantity (Tarver,Wright,Pavlik do not set the same pace as Calzaghe, though Wright is a more skilled fighter too). The Hopkins of 2001-4 would not have had this problem.

No, they don't. The Compubox numbers that Calzaghe fans worship so much mean nothing, they are so inaccurate they are absolutely worthless. Hopkins got through with more clean, effective and significant punches, therefore he won the fight and should have got the decision.

 

Fair play for such in depth analysis, must have taken a crazy amount of time. According to these punch stats Hopkins outlanded, but then you can argue they were still close enough to the point you'd give Hopkins a round here and there and ALL the other ones Calzaghe wins on agression and ring generalship for tiring him out and making him fight the most negative and dirty fight I've seen in a while. Kudo's for the thread though, interesting read and can fully understand where you are coming from, however Hopkins cams to spoil and steal and only one of the judges saw it incorrectly... iirc the same judge that gave Holyfield a favorable score card in the first Lewis fight? Either way, none of this changes the result, Hopkins lost and all the if's, but's and maybe's wont change any of that

 

Because he KO'ed Veit in 1 round but was taken 6 in the rematch (it was harder than the Lacy fight according to Joe).

 

So what you are saying is that as he only won a close SD with Hopkins 1st time around, he won't rematch him because he knows that the fight will be even harder, thus he will lose??

 

LMFAO at the desperation of this thread

 

Joe is a confident, sometimes arrogant guy, i really doubt he is scared of losing a rematch with Hopkins. I think he believes his first win was so dominant in his mind that it simply isn't required.

 

I don't agree with this.

He knows it wasn't a dominant win he's admitted that. He also knows though that he was the only one pushing the fight and was very frustrated by Hopkins cheating, spoiling tactics. Couple that with the fact that he doesn't like the guy what with the way Bhop conducted himself throughout the whole affair and you can't blame him for not wanting a second fight.

Personally I don't blame Hopkins for the tactics he used, sometimes you have to do whatever it takes to win the fight.

He is a smart man, there is no way he would fight Calzaghe the way he fought Pavlik for instance.

 

I'm not at all worked up actually. I've always been pretty comfortable about this and Calzaghe overall, to the point I rarely even talk about him anymore.

I'd say you seem far more hurt about it if you have to spend 4 hours slowing it down and documenting in NotePad to try and prove your point. And at the end of it, you won't have changed anybodys mind because nobody is going to do the same. People have watched the fight in real time, maybe once again after that and come to their decision.

 

edit

 

yeah cos his facial expressions after the fight really told that story atsch

 

well done on the detail of the thread i've often considered posting something similar to this because I've come frustrated with the constant referrals to the punchstats by uneducated observers and calzaghe fans.
Awesome post san

 

This is a key point to touch on.

Why would Calzaghe go back to America and fight Hopkins when he won the first fight with everything in Hopkins favour? If Hopkins wants it so bad the emphasis would be on him to come over to the UK and fight.

If people think he's going to get a decision fighting like that, in the UK, well...they are delusional and naive. Hopkins would have to make it far more clear.

 

Hopkins also CHEATED that round (and the one before). How can you support a blatant cheat?

 

it only matters if the referee does something about it and takes a point away that should be the only reason it gets accounted for in scoring