Did calzaghes legacy increase or suffer for hopkins fight ?

Most people scored it like I did, a close win for Calzaghe were he was very ineffective for large parts due to Hopkins defence but offered far more offensively than Hopkins & made Hopkins fake a low blow because the pace was too much for him to handle.

It was a terrible fight to watch in all honesty but one that Calzaghe deservedly won, Hopkins landed a few single clean quality punches but nowhere near enough. I`d always fancy Calzaghe to outpoint Hopkins at any stage anyway, the more active Hopkins becomes, the more his defence opens up & the more Calzaghe lands, catch 22 for B-Hop, he either loses boring or loses exciting.

 

As for the thread title.... his legacy increased but not by that much because as I already said above it was a scrappy, styles cancelling each other out, close type fight... the bonus is Hopkins performances either side of the Calzaghe loss, that shuts down the 43 year old excuses (or at least it should to any non biased person) & shows that Calzaghe was indeed a special fighter.

 

Will be remembered as an iconic victory. you have to remember that Bhop spent what were supposed to be his prime years fighting cans in arguably the worst middleweight era in history.

we could have seen 36 year old Hopkins take on joe but we all know that Hopkins ducked a career hight payday in 2002 when an offer was put on the table for Calzaghe to travel to america and fight Hopklns. Sadly, Hopkins was more interested in fighting welterweights.

the great thing that Calzaghe's win was that he had just cleared out 168 and for his first fight at 175, he travelled to america and beat Bernard sandwiched inbetween the finest run of victories in B-hops career = winky-tarver-pavllik-jones-pascal. Bernard was known as the man at 175 and was ranked p4p number 4 by ring magazine.

as for the fight, calzaghe had everything against him - the new weight, fighting on foreign soil, a corrupt referee performance from cortez, 3 american judges, was knocked down in the 1st round and still triumphed. the 116-111 card was about right but remember if it wasn't for joes careless start, the score-card would have been a dominant 118-111 card.

you also have to remember that one fighter came to put everything on the line and have a tare-up on foreign soil, and one fighter came to repetitively hold, headbutt, feign injuries and spoll the fight. despite all this calzaghe triumphed and it is definitely up there in calzaghe's top 3 wins. the sad part for bernard is that if he could have beaten calzaghe, it would have been remembered as the greatest win of his entire career but as usual bernard came up short when it really mattered.

 

Yes, Bernard has never really been known as a fast pace fighter so the thought that Calzaghe would have won at any age is not out of the realm of possibility.

 

Difference is Ward's career is only beginning

 

Who at SMW is a better win than Kessler that Ward can face?

 

Ward has damn near beat everyone there and it didnt take him his entire damn career like Calzaghe....

 

At 28 Ward is the linear smw champ...at 28 Calzaghe was fighting the David Starie and Richie Woodhall of the world

 

That's because he is fighting against an unspectacular SMW division populated by calzaghe leftovers and leftovers of calzaghe leftovers. Also drained LHW's with no SMW pedigree.

 

oh yea cause he should be fighting the Manfredo's of the world and stopping them like this

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Wards resume at 28 is better then Joes entire damn career at smw...not even close

 

Bute would have been before Froch got to him, Ward didn't want any of it though despite Bute being the IBF champ, undefeated, ranked #2 in the division and #8 on the P4P list.

 

His legacy was already complete as the greatest SMW ever, but beating the LHW champ definately didnt hurt it.

Also the fact that Calzaghe beat Hopkins in between Hopkins best wins of Tarver, Wright and Pavlik looks good also

Almost everyone that scored the fight for Hopkins is lying to themselves and others. I understand that Hopkins is an American legend that people want to see as an iconic figure. America love a reformist and Hopkins as a former armed robber turned world champ is just the story that wins Americas hearts but...

Here are some solid facts
1. Calzaghe landed more than 100 punches than Hopkins throughout the fight.
2. Contrary to what people want to believe, Calzaghe also made Hopkins miss more
3. All round punch percentages, Calzaghe finished ahead of Hopkins
4. Calzaghe outlanded Hopkins in every round
5. A Byrd who scored for Hopkins it appears has a history for bad scorecards. Type in Adalaide Byrd in Google and see what comes up for yourself, still here are some little things for you to look at
a. A Byrd was the only judge out of the 3 scoring judges that had Mack ahead against Cloud
b. The K Pavlik - A Lopez fight was scored 98-92, 99-91 by the other 2 judges, A Byrd scored it 95-95
c. A Byrd was one of the judges that had Morales a 4 point loser against Maidana
d. In the S Aydin vs S Ouali fight, the other 2 judges scored clearly for Aydin. Byrd scored for Ouali
e. The J Almaraz/C Tyler fight was scored a Maj-Dec all because of one judge, guess which? A Byrd
f. The A DeMarco/J Reyes fight was a SD. Guess who the odd judge out was? A Byrd.
g. The R Torres - M Arnaoutis fight was a close fight, a point either way to 2 judges but a wide result scored by Byrd
h. In the A Pryor Jr/D Stanislavjevic SD, guess who the odd judge out was? You guessed it... A Byrd
i. The W Ferguson/J Lopez SD, guess who the odd judge out was? You guessed it... A Byrd

I think thats enough for you to get the picture with Byrd. Remember the other 2 judges scored clearly for Calzaghe

6. Calzaghe beat Hopkins in America, at a new weight with 3 American judges and Cortez as ref.
7. Calzaghe scored the single highest score card against Hopkins ever 116-111.
8. The 2 judges that scored for Calzaghe agreed on 9 of the rounds
9. Calzaghe landed more on Hopkins than anyone ever.


Now I know there will be a flood of people coming on here noting Hopkins scoring a flash KD in the first round, and I agree that Hopkins did win a few rounds even when he didnt land as often, but people are mad if they think Calzaghe won on workrate, Calzaghe won because he was able to land his left more often than Hopkins could land his right.
Calzaghe finished the stronger and took away the moments Hopkins likes down the stretch.
Other thoughts, If Hopkins thought he was winning, do you think he would have been looking for time out and would bother trying to get points deducted off of Calzaghe, of course he wouldnt, Hopkins knew he was losing.

What I do note is that nobody seems to mind Hopkins lost to Taylor. In the first Hopkins/Taylor fight, Jermaine was badly hurt and Hopkins looked the stronger at the end, yet it seems to upset alot of these people that Calzaghe beat Hopkins. Appears very biased.

 

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