Better resume: Calzaghe at 168 or Hopkins at 160?

To be fair, we don't know if Kessler is HOF material YET. The man has a long way to go before we judge, he's also a former WBC/WBA champion, can't ignore that. The tournament and future fights should give us a better image.

 

As I said in a previous post, both have their share of question marks but Calzaghe clearly has more. I don't think it's fair to say if negotiations didn't go his fights wouldn't have happened, the fights DID happen in the end and he did show enough interest to reconsider/negotiate and come out with a deal. Calzaghe never did.

Another difference is Hopkins fought and beat all champions in the division and fully unified. The only title he wont vacant was the IBF and that's after he fought for it against Jones in another attempt to win a vacant title. WBC, WBA and WBO titles were all won beating champions. Calzaghe showed zero interest looking to unify and had to wait for Kessler and Lacy to pack their bags all the way to England.

Yes, it's true Calzaghe moved to the US for Hopkins. Can't expect the lineal Lt. Heavyweight champion to pack his belts and go to you too.

 

piont blank. plus he's on the good end of 30 so he has plenty of time

 

And his abilities are very underrated. He might be a basic fighter but a VERY good one at it in my opinion. Being basic doesn't mean you're worthless, there was a time when Pacquiao was basic too. All it takes is will and desire, the tools are obviously there.

 

It's amazing how easily people forget that Hopkins was considered to have a ho-hum resume beyond his impressive overall defense streak prior to the De La Hoya fight, which was 9 nine years into his reign.

The Trinidad win was very impressive and shouldn't be discredited because Trinidad looked damn good at that weight prior to the fight. Also, Hopkins won with ring smarts and strategy, not from being the more-natural middleweight. However, even after that win, Hopkins did little the next few years. In fact, he was criticized a lot for throwing away a lot of the momentum from beating Trinidad.

I remember reading articles wondering if Hopkins was subconsciously sabotaging his own career after Trinidad because he needed to be the underdog and couldn't handle success. That was definitely overstating the point but is illustrative of how he was viewed just 6 years ago as not having an particularly impressive reign.

Hopkins has done a lot as a light heavyweight to raise his status, and his longevity is incredible, but his resume as a middleweight beltholder is more similar to Calzaghe's reign than would be first assumed.

 

My points still stand- does beating a couple more beltholders who happen to be smaller fighters outweigh fighting guys who are full-fledged 168 fighters with home stadium advantage? They're both true. Both guys typically only took fights on their terms once they were in control, so why nitpick? Nitpicking's what one would have to do to find a marked difference between the two given that neither rushed to give up a damned thing in negotiations.

As for unification: It still took Hopkins 6 years to start unification, 6 1/2 years to unify the big 3, and nearly 10 years to unify completely. It took Calzaghe 8 1/2 to unify with Lacy and 10 to (what should've been) completely unify with Kessler.

Bernard unified the big 3 quicker, but I don't see where he did it so much more urgently than what Calzaghe did that it should make a marked difference. It's not like Hopkins went all Kostya Tszyu and did it in a couple of years. He milked the hell out of being champ before the big fights, just like Calzaghe did.

What I see is a couple of great fighters with alot of parallels. Picking apart one guy over the other's a tricky proposition because there's ammo for both sides of the argument. That's why I'm throwing in the towel and leaving it as equal. :good:hi:

 

Hopkins by a land slide ... Calzaghe wasn't fighting top caliber fighters ... both were in weak divisions but during Hopkins' run, he fought better competition.

 

great points you made.

got to say it good when some sensible poster post. hope fully some sip shits don't come and mees up the flow :yep

 

both overrated when it comes to qulity of opposition ... but I have to give it to Hopkins fighting as the undisputed champion from 01-06

 

Both have their share of questions like ALL fighters do, no one is perfect and they're not meant to be as it would be inhuman anyway. Your points make sense, still I would say Hopkins showed more interest in unifying than Calzaghe, Calzaghe never had any desire to unify and never attempted to do so either by asking champions to come to him if they want his title like their titles meant nothing.

It's well known that both Lacy and Kessler were the ones to show more interest in making the fight and Kessler was unifying too early and showed far more interest than Calzaghe did earlier in his career. Think it's fair to say again that if Kessler and Lacy weren't the ones interested in unification the fight with Calzaghe wasn't going to happen, they're the ones that pushed for it and constantly brought it up. Calzaghe's demands remained the same and these guys had no other choice but to move with their titles to make it happen, Calzaghe sure as hell wasn't.

 

And at the end of the day, the fights happened, and Calzaghe won them. Bargaining tactics or perceived interest matter less to me than the end results, but it's interesting that you only bring up Calzaghe in it as if Hopkins made every big match he possibly could've and jumped at the chance. That wasn't the case. They were both excellent "career managers" to go along with being great fighters.

As far as depth of resume goes, I don't know who'd win between Echols or Allen vs Bika or Mitchell. I don't know how people are so adament one way or the other about it, really. If you prefer Hopkins' defenses, great. I just don't know where there's any real margin of superiority to either man's reign.

Edit: I've got to call it a day on ESB for now, good debating as always Scar. :thumbsup

 

In Calzaghe's case replace Brewer with Reid (SD12), and veit means nothing.
In Hopkins' case exclude Joppy , Eastman (or include them , only to highlight hopkins' great weakness of resume/lack of quality oposition)
also remember that Hopkin's was bigger than trinidad and much bigger than oscar. when johnson fought hopkins he was quite a lauzy fighter who only fought bums untill that point , and hopkins almsot the same (except baptist) even losing to one of them and (additionaly) to roy jones.

The thread presents a good question that its answer is :
Calzaghe at 168 , even by not a small margin , and at least he hadn't laboured so hard against bums (Mercado,Clinton Mitchell).

 

Well , i already know he isn't , he won't be and the tournament will prove it.
even if he wins the tounament , that still doesn't make him HOF.
his only 2 meaningul wins are Andrade and Thobela who was a former lightweight who Kessler still didn't manage to stop , he didn't even fight Mads Larsen from his own country .. what difficulty did that fight had from being held ?

Why ?
Who did he beat for these belts ?

 

Calshit****? What a fud you are

 

Theobela? WTF?

Really?