I have watched the fight a good few times now and keep coming to this same conclusion. Obviously scoring the fight was very hard, two styles that are less than complimentary added to the fact that their skills are fast eroding. From my own perspective i have to give credit to Hopkins, his movement made Calzaghe look amateurish and his punching was far the cleaner of the two, not to take anything away from Joe but Hopkins has the keys to his style; his age just didn't allow him to unlock the door. It becomes an issue of awarding the fight for ring craft and accuracy or aggression and output. All in all i think the fight was so difficult to score that i think that whoever came out swinging and took the last two rounds would have convinced the judges. If Bernard had come out and thrown more in the last two he would have won the fight. His skills were clearly the better of the two he just needed to cement that by really laying claim to the fight.
You know my brother said the exact same thing, not as Joe being amateurish of course but those slaps, specifically that hook kept catching Hopkins over and over and it's actually an amateur punch. Hopkins had no answer/defense for it to the point where he got really frustrated as the fight went on and it was clear.
Yea right, Hopkins had to fake a low blow in order to buy himself time to recover and get some breathing.
In what sense? I'm not putting Joe down he is a great fighter, but he has problems with his style that a younger Hopkins would have capitalized on. Style's make fights. As i say, i feel that if Hopkins was a little more showy in the end game, he would have taken the fight.
Blocky did. He said Calz. was 70% of peak. I thought he looked pretty damn good myself, maybe 90% peak.
Survive the fight? Hopkins who has never been stopped, fighting a guy who is not built to put on weight, with hands that are ****ed, who also happens to have a terrible punching technique as well. Calzaghe stops nobody at 175. Calzaghe is a great unorthodox boxer, boxer being the important word. Joe was the one put down and latterly wobbled.
Fighting elite competition tends to do that, no matter how old they are. In any event i'm english. Quite what nationality has got to do with anything when someone subjectively assess a fight i don't know. To add the point that you think he easily outscored him, to the fact that you thought he would stop him validates my opinion that you are ****ing dumb.
