Why do people hate Joe Calzaghe?

I misread you - believing a prime vs prime matchup. The 1995 version of Maske vs the present Roy Jones is a no contest. The jab and excellent stamina would pretty much take care of that......

I was backing Hopkins to beat Pavlik, so not a surprise at all to me...

I wasn't that interested in boxing back then.... but from what I have learnt since, a top 10 P4P may comprise of the following.....

Lennox Lewis
Roy Jones
Bernard Hopkins
Oscar De La Hoya
Felix Trinidad
Naseem Hamed
Shane Mosley
Evander Holyfield
Pernell Whitaker (perhaps)
Ricardo Lopez

Names like that.

 

I agree.... Don't dislike him.... I dislike the way his career has been handled and I dislike his style. Its minging. But minging is sometimes good enough.... At school we had a footballer on the team who was utterly minging... It was like watching a pissed up donkey trying to moonwalk.... However he was a super reliable and therefore a good player.

 

Spot on.... compare that list to the one today h2h your knowlege is excellent BB.

 

Add Ike Quartey, Winky Wright, Barrera, Morales and Floyd Mayweather.... Go back a few more years and you can add Riddick Bowe, Mike Tyson, Terry Norris and Julian Jackson.

 

There are plenty of reasons that this could be attributed to though......

1. Fractured titles. The best are no longer forced to face the best. You can hide behind a title beating up bums, without having to develop your skills and earn decent money. If a top mando comes up, you can vacate and challenge the weakest champion - then call yourself a two time champ.

2. HBO. They don't seem to have anyone with boxing knowledge buying fights. If they did, they would only recognise one title and force guys to fight for that title otherwise they don't get on the network - therefore don't get the big £££. Remember the Cotto vs Gomez & Margo vs Cintron bill.... WTF? A casual boxing fan with no real feel for the sport would find it a tad odd that two guys were announced as welterweight champions.... on the same night in the same building - this ties into 1. abouve.

3. Motivation/Peer Pressure. A lot of young people find it hard to get motivated for anything these days other than committing crime and firing down the beers. Why bother getting off your ass at 5am, going running, then training half the day when you can hang about with your mates, mug old ladies thru day and shoot people at night.

There are no doubt plenty more.... I will have a think and re-post.

 

Yes I'd agree, I'd also say that matchmaking has become a lot more competitive in recent years.... I don't mean the low key match ups but since De La Hoya set a bit of a precedent fighting every one out there other fighters have done the same. Mid 90's no one wanted to unify...

 

Neither do i . I really don't get people slagging him off as a person when you have so many twats in the sport. Couldn't put it better than the post above.
Hopkins acts a **** and he gets knowing laughs " thats just Bernard ", Calzaghe acts a bit boring and he's a twat. Don't get it.

 

He is bitter about not getting big fights. He is bitter about not receiving the same sort of public adulation as someone like Hatton. He is bitter about the media not being all over him.

Joe needs to understand that despite his elite skills he will not get what he wants cos he never went out and took it. He never warmed to the fans or media. He just plodded along racking up average defence after average defence.

In fairness Joes stardom came when he beat Lacy BUT Lacy was the one who built himself up on paper, made himself popular, went after Joe and made the fight happen (even in Joes back yard).

When Joe finally fought big fights, went to America, got interviewed more etc everything he wanted came. He got the big crowds, the home following, the money, Sportsman of the year etc

Even now Joe is bitter. He acts like everyone should believe no one is worthy of him i.e. Pavlik and Dawson. He fights RJJ now but wants adulation like he beat a prime RJJ. Remember when he moaned about not getting Sportsman of the year. Even the year he won it, I believe he was moaning that he wouldn't get it. How about th M&S advert that Frank got for Joe but Joe didn't want to do it.

Same happened to Floyd. He thought that his skills was enough but Floyd had to show character, move weight classes, talk the talk, give the interviews, training videos etc When Floyd did that he got everything he asked for in terms of money and adulation.

 

I am certainly in favour of a guy vacating a belt in order to get a bigger fight..... Hatton has done it a couple of times, more recently Margarito did it to fight Cotto......

I'd actually say at the top end the matchmaking is tougher, but at the lower end it is much weaker, far too weak. You can get guys in the top 15 of an alphabet org without actually beating more than a couple of decent people. Steve Foster is an example.... his best win is over John Simpson... yet he is ranked in the top 10 by the WBO (there may be more to it than that but still...) hardly makes any sense.

This isn't just exclusive to boxing though..... I have felt the same about a couple of other sports recently, rugby union especially.

 

He tried to make fights with both Hopkins and Jones in the 90s and both turned him down, HBO have confirmed this. Basically he was to them what Dawson is to him now, a massive threat but not a big enough name to warrant the risk. Nobody can deny that the quality of opposition prior to Lacy wasn't great but this was more to do with Frank Warren rather than Calzaghe not wanting the big fights. He should have been smarter and split with Warren years ago. The onus was on him to get out to the US and make a name for himself and get people demanding that he be in the mix. Then the likes of Hopkins and Jones wouldn't have been able to ignore him and these fights would have been made 10 years earlier than when they did actually happen Sadly this never happened and mismanagement certainly hampered his career.

 

Why would people hate a very successful multi-millionaire world-class sportsman with a glamour model girlfriend?

 

Aye a little bit of that as well. People hate him in the same way they hate Mayweather.

 

But Mayweather has got an incredible resume... Calzaghe hasn't.

 

:good ~But there is no comparison stylistically. Mayweather is in a different league in nearly every department. Just thought i'd add that.

 

Incredible?? :-(