Calzaghe's reputation before beating Lacy

It was weak, but not shocking. And those other men were not "bums" like some of the idiots contend.
But you have a huge anti Calzaghe bias so I don't expect to get much objective thought from you. I'm not even a Calzaghe fan and never have been, but I try and look at every fighter without huge bias clouding my judgement.

 

Average resume. Dominant WBO champion for some years. Similar to today's Zsolt Erdei. His opponents were slightly better, though.

 

I remember that too, people were saying he's old and past it, some were saying he did nothing and proved nothing, no one even mentioned his ability in the ring and picked on his last fight where he injured his hand and went the distance in a "boring" fight. No one gave him a chance on ESB, absolutely NONE except for a few British fans you can count with one hand and even those got a lot of **** for picking him to win.

 

Calzaghe was PAST his peak when he fought Lacy.

Futhermore, out of 33 American boxing writers,32 picked Lacy to win.

 

i have always been a fan.

i even saw his first pro fight live and went to his fight in v delaney long before he became champ.

as to his reputation on esb , it has peaked and dipped and peaked and dipped.

i remember we were all impressed with the brewer fight at the time, then it was a quiet period with non entities.
lot of critism with home cooking after the mitchell fight.
then critism of opponents
lot of fans thought he was still talented but on the slide for a while after , but in hindsight he most probably was not able to get up for the fighters frank was putting in front of him until the lacy fight.

the rest is where we are up to now on esb.

 

All you need to know is that there were many of us that made a huge amount of money on Joe Calzaghe in the Lacy fight because we knew the quality of opponents he had beaten and the quality of fighter he was.

People like to say Joe's history meant nothing, OK - well, tell that to my bank manager when I told him the 25k I took out was used for a bet that netted me just over 100k in return.

 

I didn't think much of some one who dodged Ottka, with one belt, or Ottka with two belts.....offering 2 belt Ottka 1/3* of what Joe got and fighing in Wales. *And less than Ottka was making in Germany.
Talks went down hill when Cal hurt his hands.

Lacy was the first Live Body...no Cal fought the guy who lost his belt to Ottka right after Otta took it from him...so that was a Live Body...and a pretty good fighter too. I was impressed he won that fight and easy.
Right after I kept waiting for the Ottka fight....
Dam that would have been a good fight.

 

Fact is, Lacy sucked before even fighting Joe...Watch the fights, Lacy struggled with cabdrivers

 

It's like anything. Discredit the undefeated fighter.

They've been doing it ever since "Blocky" existed here and he used to put them in their place over it.

They do it with Mayweather. They were doing it to RJJ (notice how he was never considered "great" in his time, only after he had lost what used to make him great?)