Calzaghe WBO reign, "a decade of dross"

The Dawson fight was a complete joke as was Dawson for the rest of his career post the KO loss he suffered pointlessly boiling down to fight someone who was about to come up to 175 anyway.

He would of beaten Kessler anyway IMO but his tactics in that fight were pretty disgraceful. There's no way a European fighter would be allowed to get away with those kind of shenanigans Stateside.

As for Lacy, yes that kind of defeat can break a fighter but I think it's often ignored that he suffered a number of debilitating injuries post Calzaghe and that more likely stopped him reaching his potential than the Manchester beatdown.

 

He was afraid to go out in case he'd run into Steve Collins

 

The thing is, Sven Ottke did exactly the same thing for about 5 or 6 years, and he was just about Calzaghe's main rival at the time at 168.

Also, Bernard Hopkins at 160. No one really gave a **** about Hopkins when he was middleweight champion. The Trinidad win in 2001 gained him a bit more value (6 years after winning his first belt at 160) but going into that fight Trinidad was by far the bigger draw.

Calzaghe may be the worst case but you can look at any of the 'names' at 160, 168, 175 of that era and note the long years spent clocking up 'dross'.
Look at Roy Jones Jr. .... he was a genuine star of his era, hugely recognized and hyped as the best pound-for-pound fighter in the world for years, but he spent about 7 or 8 years fighting nobodies and has-beens.
Look at James Toney .... he was a big star in the early 1990s and has something of a cult following now too, but after his loss to Jones in 1994, until his win against Jirov in 2003, he was pretty much out in the wilderness, fighting bums.

This can't all be down to Calzaghe and Warren.
It seems a lot of the fighters of the era around those weights have similar extended episodes of dross.

That's not to say Calzaghe isn't the worst of the bunch, but the whole picture looks weird, it's not just his career.

 

And, of course, the WBO super-middleweight title and rankings was the lowest of the low.
That had been firmly established during the Eubank reign, which was mostly utter crap too.

 

Sven Ottke was a disgrace with more controversial decisions or referee mistakes than perhaps any world champion of recent memory. He refused to box out of Germany and ducked all the legitimate challengers he could. Joe may have had a period of fringe fighters rather than top class elite but he was nowhere near as poor as Sven.

 

Some good points but Hopkins to be fair had fought Jones before fighting Trinidad, plus he'd taken Glen Johnson's unbeaten record.

And I'm not really sure there was a period of seven/eight years when Jones was fighting nobodies and has beens. Beat Hopkins and Toney in eighteen months, and whilst what follows doesn't look great, consider the following. Vinny Paz is ranked 5 at the weight by the Ring when Jones fights him, and of course Jones wins. The following year he moves to light heavy. Mike McCallum is old, but he's also ranked 6. Jones beats him in his first fight at the weight. Going into 1997 Jones is ranked 2 at 175, behind Virgil Hill and above Montell Griffin in 3. He loses then avenges against Griffin, and then fights Hill and beats him as well.

The names in the next few years again need context. Nobody is saying that Lou Del Valle, Eric Harding or Clinton Woods are all time greats, but when he fought them, the Ring had Del Valle 6, Reggie Johnson 3, Telesco 9, Harding 7, Woods 9.

Indeed - think of the rankings in 2001/02. Roy was champion, and the rest of the top ten were made up of Harding, Johnson, Griffin, Tarver, Gonzalez, Del Valle, Woods, Harmon, Telesco - he'd beaten or would beat all of them. Yes, Michalczewski didn't happen, but Jones by and large cleared out a division in a way that Calzaghe didn't even get close to doing.

I've said elsewhere that careers are made not just on five or so superfights, but in cleaning out contenders. Calzaghe didn't really chase the big fights, but also, there are names which whilst not world beaters, were better than what he was facing. Markus Beyer, Antwun Echols, Danny Green, Anthony Mundine; no ATG's but way better than Salem/Manfredo/Mkrtchyan/Ashira/Pudwill/ThornberryGimenez.

 

Jones 100% fought nobodies for 7-8 years considering the opposition that were available to him. He could pick and choose his opponents at the time and yet his own network, HBO, called him 'Reluctant Roy'.

Vinny Paz was a blown up lightweight by that point, Lou Del Valle managed to put Jones on his ass, he fought Virgill Hill coming off a loss to DM. He flat out avoided Nunn, Liles and Collins, 3 fighters who were DESPERATE to fight him.

This is a completely different situation to Calzaghe, who was deemed high-risk with low reward. People didn't want to fight him. How many times did they try to make the Marcus Beyer fight? Sven Ottke didn't want to know.

 

5ft4in Vinny Pazienza should've been in a wheelchair after his neck injury, not a boxing ring. Purely a money fight with a name. Then Tony Thornton was coming out of retirement after having his shoulder replaced, and his shoulder popped out in the fight so the ref stopped it. Then Bryant Brannon was another 5ft4in guy. Then Mike McCallum was 40 years old with tits and a tyre around his waist. Etc.

 

This ignores the fact that after he'd been at light heavy for about four years Jones had beaten just about everyone the Ring considered top ten. After being super middle champion for a decade Calzaghe hadn't got close to that.

He could have done; I'm not for a second doubting his talent. But I can recognise that beating Hill/Johnson/Harding are better wins than beating Ashira/Manfredo/Mkrtchyan.

 

They are. But beating Reid/Woodhall/Brewer/Mitchell/Kessler are better than beating Frazier/Hall/Gonzales/Telesco/Kelly. Starie beat Woods (even looked like he beat Ottke) and Sheika beat Glencoffe. But that's over the course of a whole ****ing decade of years! Ray Robinson fought every two weeks, not every eight months. Also let's not forget the hammering Brewer gave Echols, robbed in that fight (ref should've stopped in Brewer's favour, BS stoppage for Echols after)...and the Hell that Echols gave Hopkins.

 

And everyone felt Lacy would tear his head off (I didn't, I saw it as a mismatch IF his hand held up and IF he boxed).

 

And Jones did NOT fight Maske, Michalczewski, Rocchigianni or Nunn, all rated in the top 3 let alone the top 10. Officially ducked Nunn, robbed Rocky of his belt, was never Lineal Champ (that was Dariusz M) or Ring Champ, lost fair and square to Montell Griffin (in a fight he was schooled in) and got busted for PEDs.

Granted he was past his best at 175, and probably was never a full light heavy anyway, but still...

 

Mental midget is the furthest from what Calzaghe was, considering he got off the floor to beat both Hopkins and RJJ and gave Lacy the most one sided 12 round demolition ever seen in a unification fight, granted Jones wasn't the fighter he was by the time he fought Joe, but to get up and win a world title fight on 2 seperate occasions against 2 legends of the sport on their soil certainly isn't the actions of someone who lacks the mentality required to be operating at that level. That being said, I can sympathise with the frustrations people had about some of those early defences, was it not down to Frank Warren picking these fights out as well? There were some right stinkers in there, the frustration was compounded by who he went on to beat as well. His career could have had a much different but equally successful trajectory if there was greater ambition early on, whether that was down to Joe or Frank or a combination of the 2 I honestly don't know.

 

The most overrated UK boxer in history

 

Can we get away from the idea that Joe was somehow proving himself against a legend away from home when he fought Jones? He’d written a book and (correctly) stated that fighting Roy Jones now would prove nothing as Jones was shot. He then fought Jones.

The final two fights of his career were box ticking exercises against old men (one of whom was openly known by everyone to be completely shot) in order to get Joe a Vegas fight and a New York fight.