For all those who say Calzaghe would beat Hopkins no matter when they fought...

Frank Warren is whining on like a jilted lover. He has previous form on this type of thing with fighters who have left him.

 

I just do not understand your reasoning here TJ.

I believe you are making one of two mistakes here:

- you are making the very very common error of assuming every boxer reaches his peak in his late 20s/very early 30s. Many many people assume this. However. this is not always uniformly the case. Bernard Hopkins and Juan Manuel Marquez to name but two reached their peak in their mid-30s. Naseem Hamed and Mike Tyson to name but two reached their peak in their early-mid 20s. Not every boxer conforms to the norm of peaking at 27-31.

- you have made a conscious choice to decide that Calzaghe's peak was earlier to try and prove he is a better fighter than he actually was. He did not fight top opposition 1997-2006. It is therefore easy to say he was amazing in this time period because (a) he never lost, (b) he looked spectacular in a couple of fights due to the abject state of the opponents, and (c) it legitimizes how ineffective he was v Bernard Hopkins to say he was well past his '03 prime when no-one said this before that fight.


To me, a boxer's prime MUST be taken to be the period where:

- he beat the best opponents on his resume

- he turned in his greatest performances

Simple as that.

The best opponent Joe ever beat was Mikkel Kessler.

The greatest performance of Joe Calzaghe's career was against Jeff Lacy.

These two statements cannot really be debated IMO.

Therefore, Calzaghe's peak was 2006-7.


To those like yourself TJ who say Calzaghe's peak was around '03, I suggest you are only saying this because of one fight: Byron Mitchell. And you are only saying this because Mitchell is far and away the best name on his resume before 2006. I find this belief therefore very strange, as in the Mitchell fight Calzaghe was knocked down, and then the bout was stopped prematurely in his favour. Don't get me wrong, Joe did very well to get up and then pin Mitchell back with a brilliant flurry of punches, but I fail to understand how being KD'd and then getting a stoppage which genuinely wasn't a "must stop" situation (yes, Joe would've won anyway, but the fact is the ref was early), equates to the peak of a long-standing champion.

If you are saying his peak was around '03, let's look at the two fights immediately before and immediately after Mitchell, as surely I am wrong that you are basing your claim on 2 rounds.

Pre-Mitchell opponents

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Post-Mitchell opponents

MGER MKRTCHIAN, 2004
- Who? I am unsure myself, so although I remember the fight (vaguely), I checked the guy out. What did he do to merit a crack at the title? Well, here are his last 4 fights before challenging Joe:
JOZSEF BALZACS, record 2-3-1, had lost 3 and drawn 1 of last 4
FREEMAN BARR, record 25-2, had won his last 6
SERGEY GERASIMOVICH, record 2-3-0, had lost 3 of his last 4
VAGE KOCHARYAN, record 6-5-1, had lost 5 of his last 6
Nothing else to say about this guy.


KABARY SALEM, 2004
- Record 23-5, had already lost to Mario Veit before he faced Calzaghe, never won any version of a world title.



Four sub-standard non-threatening joke defences, going by their records.

And the results/performances?

Jiminez - W12. A points win. Look at that guy's record.

Pudwill - TKO2. I honestly think my gran could've done it in 1.

Mkrtchian - TKO7. 7 rounds it took. Again, check the record. (Denis
Inkin KO'd this guy in 2 rounds in only Inkin's 2nd pro fight!!)

Salem - W12. Calzaghe knocked down again. Very poor performance by Joe's standards. This is widely acknowledged even by his fans.


Was this period really Calzaghe's peak? Better than when he mesmerized Lacy and Kessler? I just cannot understand that at all.

If you think the very best version of Bernard Hopkins could not defeat the guy who went 12 rounds with Jiminez and Salem, you're dreaming. The Calzaghe who beat Lacy would give him a much better fight, but would also lose and lose convincingly. The evidence was there in the fight. Hopkins was so much more skilled and incisive, he just did not have the stamina to sustain it. This would not be a problem for him when was a bit younger.

Simple as that.

 

They were both different fighters, its difficult to say and Hopkins chickened out.

All that actually matters is Joe has W12 over Hopkins.

 

It won't matter that much when 90%, probably more than that, of boxing magazines, journalists, ex-fighters and fans for the rest of boxing history will rank Bernard Hopkins above Joe Calzaghe in all-time pound-for-pound lists. Wait and see.

 

Well, no, that won't matter that much either. I doubt Joe will be losing sleep over it it all honesty.

All we can definitively is that Joe Calzaghe beat Bernard Hopkins at the time they fought.

 

If he wasn't losing sleep over his all-time standing, why did he suddenly start fighting good opposition in 2006 when he realized he didn't have long left, after beating up journeymen for 9 years?

We can indeed definitively say 2 of the judges believed he scored more points on that night. However, that is not the debate on this thread.

 

With regard to my response to Toffeejack about Joe's peak, what's your thoughts on that?

 

Ok, Calzaghe will wake up with hot flushes when he sees that the magazines and "expert" writers have Hopkins placed above him :roll:

We could say that the two judges with their eyes open scored the fight for Calzaghe, yes. Byrd obviously left her blind dog tied up outside the arena that night.

Since you are so worried about what the consensus thinks on matters, the consensus was Calzaghe won the fight. Which is the main thing.

As for a hypothetical matchup, its a bit of a futile debate. If Hopkins was that confident he wouldn't have done a runner. As I said, they were both different, the recent fight only serves to muddy the waters.

 

Cheers amigo :good

 

I struggle to pin it down. It's very difficult to pin down a time for a man that relies on physical gifts more than most, but also ring savvy that has come into play more recently. Also, he tends to fight up to the level of his opposition, so although he may have looked crap at times against medicores we couldn't rule out that if forced to he could have produced something top level. E.g. From Bika performance to Kessler only 1 year later...

 

This is a brilliant post. As a Calzaghe fan, I also thought he peaked with the Lacy fight and was still there at the Kessler performance. I don't see how your reasoning that it was then (and not in '03 as Toffeejack suggested) can be argued with.

Of course, I don't agree with you regarding Hopkins though. The Calzaghe of the Lacy fight would give any Hopkins a very very tricky night IMO.