Calzaghe & Hopkins are like Ying & Yang.

Say what you like but these two are - in my view - like Kryptonite to one another; their different skills sets make them very evenly matched in the ring.

There is no one on Hopkins resume that had Calzaghe fought

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(like Johnson when he was green for instance) that Calzaghe wouldn't have beaten. And visa versa for for Hopkins on Calzaghes resume - RJJ though ofc prime for prime gets a nod on both in my eyes though - just don't even say Winky/Pavlik or Tarver would beat Joe please......

So what's the point of this thread? Well, too many people bash one or the other fighter & always bring up the prime debate. Prime Hopkins or Prime Joe. I think if they'd have fought 100 times prime for prime it would be close to 50 wins apiece. I doubt either would ever dominate the other. Both were smart, both were technical, both were sly, workhorses, skilled, mentally adept, powerful - the list goes on.

I also made a thread here:

http://www.eastsideboxing.com/forum/showthread.php?t=161520

Now there were two reasons for this.

1) because I wanted to see whether anyone truly believed Trinidad or DLH could beat Calzaghe (any sane boxing fan would tell you no way - had one early response saying Tito would KTFO Joe)

2) Because in another thread someone made the ridiculous statement of why would Hopkins want to go up a weight to fight Calzaghe (SMW king of 2002) when he could fight guys coming up in weight - I wanted to emphasize the absolute stupidity of that statement because the reality was Calzaghe & Hopkins were the same say - only diet & lifestyle seperated them. The only way to do that was to get enough people to highlight how silly it would have been for Joe to have fought them. A name they would be for a good resume but a fair match up? Definitely not.

And I succeeded!!!!

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*pay particular note to fleaman and his utterly contemptuous attempts to belittle me for even suggesting these matchups. He didn't even pick up that there was an underlying relation between it all - just spat insults at me - Just how petty can you get?*

I didn't want to go down this route but I had to. I had to play devil's advocate to ensure things were seen objectively. I had to get people to indirectly state against what they would otherwise have rigorously defended against just to create an even playing field to prove a point about Joe & Bernard.

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You could argue resumes, you could argue Prime for Prime but at the end of the day all you can go on is who fought who and at what dates and the results can realistically be seem as pretty conclusive; at least to majority view any ways. Any point, any time within their careers these two would have had close fights that would have been pick'em

Thanks for reading :good