Calzaghes Resume looks even worse now!!!!

Yeah like John David Jackson, and Robert Allen, and Antwun Echols, and Glenn Johnson, and Howard Eastman. Total no hopers!

 

Regardless of how old Joe was Hopkins was still 6 years older. Maybe thats why the fight happened when it did, Joe slowed but Bernard was slower. I dont want to go on and on with this. I watched most of Calzahges fights. Most of his competition was ****, certainly around the beginning of 2000. The WBO sanctioned way more **** poor fighters than the IBF, just look at his record. Guys like Will Mcentire and Tucker Pudwill had no business being the ring with a world champion, and you wont find any fighters of that **** poor caliber on Hopkins resume when he was recording his title defenses.

 

How many of Johnson's losses were robberies though? Someone analysed this ages ago and it turned out most of them were. The Sheika/Branco 1s certainly were, some say the Otke 1 was a robbery, I havent seen most of his losses to know. And how many were short notice?

Hopkins fought everyone in the MW division and any LMW who wanted to fight, I think his competition gets underrated by virtue of him dominating them all and not giving them their chance to shine

 

I never said it was stellar I said it was solid and Johnson certainly falls into that category. In contrast Joes is horrendous and downright embarassing in some of his title defeneses.

 

JD Jackson was decent in the late'80s/early'90s...he was a shot fighter that turned in a pathetic effort against Hopkins.

I like Johnson as a tough gatekeeper, but he wasnt even that at the time.

That's a sorry list of names.Eastman was garbage.No balance, no speed, just awful.

Echols was the best of them.A huge puncher, but even in the realm of the pure puncher he was a limited unskilled fighter.

 

It was still Glen Johnson, maybe an inexperienced 1 but he was 28 and you act like boxers suddenly aquire skills and athleticism, they don't, they learn them from a young age, it was still Glen Johnson in there and Hopkins dominated him start to finnish, no one else has done that before or since. The same Johnson arguably beat SMW king Ottke 2years later

 

Hopkins was 90% prime v Calzaghe, I have stated that from the day they fought, this was proven when Hopkins demolished Kelly Pavlik, Joe Calzaghe was also old when he fought Hopkins {who retired first ?}, I have also been on record as saying that Calzaghe was 90% prime also when they fought {ring craft and nous getting better with age for Joe ,hands getting worse}, but if I was to split hairs, I would have said that the 43 year old Hopkins was closer to prime than the now retired 37 year old Calzaghe.
I could not honestly say if Hopkins fought well or poorly against Calzaghe, but I do know that Calzaghe fought one of his worse ever fights against Hopkins, which probably helped him to decide one more payday against Roy Jones and I am done.
These are the reasons for thinking that a prime Calzaghe beats a prime Hopkins, Calzaghe was bigger and quicker and when he had hands, he used to stop his opponents all the time, never a one punch merchant, always devastating combinatons, but the biggest thing in Joes arsenal is he was a born winner who did not know how to lose, only the 2nd man in 100 years to win 3 ABA championships at different weights as an amateur and as a pro he always found a way to win, which is not always the case with other champion boxers.
All in all, Calzaghe was very underated by the public but not by the pros thats why they did not want to fight him, citing with some justification that they could make more money fighting other easier opponents for more money, its plain wrong the flak he has taken for not fighting Hopkins and Jones Jnr till the end of their careers, they were equally at fault if not more at fault that the match ups did not take place .
I think that most people would agree that if a standard top 100 ATG P4P list was taken {Calzaghe seems to be regularly getting into lists now {70s-90s}, and if the same boxers were used to compile a Head to Head list, Calzaghe would be ranked a lot higher than his P4P ranking as his resume is weak but his ability and likelyhood to beat other boxers head to head is very high, the same could be said for the other two unbeaten boxers that are likely to be found in most ATG lists Marciano and Mayweather , weakish resumes but obviously hard to beat head to head.
People that have a few losses, it is sometimes possible to say what their limit is, this not the case with some unbeaten boxers.

 

Yeah, pretty much.

 

Can the same be said for Jones win over Hopkins a few years earlier ?

 

Whatever. You want to see a sorry list put up Joes comp. Eastman was certainly better than 90% of Calzahges entire resume.

 

I realize this thread is already a million pages long, so I'm probably not contributing much. But, frankly I disagree with the notion that just because one of Calzaghe's past opponent's lost to a fighter of a lesser calibur, means that CALZAGHE'S resume should take a hit. Frankly, I think this is flawed logic. How many times have we seen a contender or titlist lose in competitive fashion to a great champion, then not long after get sparked by fighter of lower quailty? The answer is many.. It's also not like Kessler's loss to Ward came within just a few months after battling Calzaghe. The two outings were a full two years apart. Not to mention, how old was Calzaghe when he fought Kessler anyway?