Nah, he knows he was only an old man and that he beat him. And of course that Calzaghe fought only bums and old men.
and Germans, well a German............................................................ that really is a walkover I suppose.
Hopkins fought bums and young men. Calzaghe fought bums and old men. You do the math. Also, Hopkins made Calzaghe look like a ******ed spider-****** flailing its arms about while running unabashedly into a plexi-glass wall in their actual bout, despite being just shy of 137 years old.
That night Calzaghe must have been a more composed, poised and polished fighter than he usually was then. Most times I seen him he fought like a dung beetle on acid.
I could throw a sweaty jockstrap into the nearest gym and hit someone with exceptional heart and determination. I could not so easily find someone with exceptional understanding of defensive boxing, or high-level combination punching skills.
I'm not sure who I'd rate higher, as both of their resumes have different strengths, but I will say that I think Joe Calzaghe's career was brilliant.. No, he never faced an opponent of the calibur of a Marvin Hagler or a prime Roy Jones. But, I wouldn't call his best opponents bums or washed up old men either.. Calzaghe captured a few belts, made a number of defenses with those titles, beat some reasonably good fighters and ultimately retired undefeated and at the right time... Again, i don't know where he should be ranked, but his career was still brilliant.
With all that fundamental understanding he was unable to defeat the anti-fundamental Roy Jones and the erratic, attrition fighter Calzaghe.
I wasn't strictly referring to Hopkins in my previous post, I don't think he did possess (or more specifically, exhibit) exceptional combination-punching ability, I was just making a point over what is really important in boxing. To answer your question regardless, I disagree that Roy Jones was "anti-fundamental". He was unorthodox, but he still possessed good core boxing skills IMO. And anyway, he was an h2h phenomenon. Calzaghe was close to his prime in 2008 (his peak as a fighter being around 2006 as I see it), whereas Hopkins's stamina had declined substantially since his own 1997-2001 absolute peak, and yet I still scored the fight for B-Hop. That fight left me with no doubt whatsoever about what would've happened had it been a prime Bernard in the ring.
Calzaghe's prime was circa the Brewer fight imo, at least physically.He looked **** and at the start of a steep decline in the couple of years before the Lacy bout imo. That was the only reason i remember thinking lacy had a chance(Jeff never remotely impressed me). That said, in retrospect it was probably about 70% coasting and giving a bare minimum of effort that had him looking so bad. Hopkins was definitely the further of the two away from his best, but had successfully adopted a more minimal spoiling style to suit his declining attributes.