Hopkins v Calzaghe: The Resume

Hopkins overcoming being 40+ to win is an ACHIEVEMENT. The guy clearly made up for the decline in his physical abilities by using his boxing brain. He is the one with those disadvantages.

Calzaghe beat a man at 40+, that is not exactly the same achievement. He beat a guy with those disadvantages.

You see?

 

After seeing the way he faded in the Calzaghe fight, do you agree with that rating now, when the guy is almost 44? You must then logically think he's going to beat Pavlik, as he is rated above him. :-(

Hopkins beat Trinidad when he was #2 p4p, and young enough to be considered prime. Hopkins beat Wright when he was top 5 p4p. :smoke

 

Johnson had nothing to offer a guy like Hopkins at that stage of his career and fought with a completely different style - Like Lacy when he fought Calzaghe??


It wasn't until later years when he had aged a bit that he became a truly consistent pressure fighter and overall a much higher level of fighter than the one Hopkins faced - Aah, NOT like Lacy this time. He never was nor ever became a 'much higher level' fighter.


The win over Hopkins himself was better than Hopkins's win over Tarver - I disagree. It was clear to me in the Hopkins-Calzaghe fight that Hopkins was the superior fighter. At 43, the guy just didn't have the stamina/energy to get through the 12 rounds. Calzaghe was awful, he won purely because of workrate, he was ineffective to the point of impotence. I don't think it was a great win at all.
When you take into account that Hopkins was coming off 2 defeats, seemed to be finished, jumped TWO weight divisions, and was VERY IMPRESSIVE in knocking down and dominating the no1 ranked lightheavyweight in the world, to win by a landslide UD (118-109 three times, no SD's here), Tarver was a far better win IMO.


Two of Hopkins's top wins were over smaller fighters - I didn't include the De La Hoya win because I do think size played a genuine role in that fight. I do not think it did in the Trinidad or Wright fights. Trinidad was 5'11", only started out his world championship career at 147, looked strong as an ox in stopping Fernando Vargas (big, unbeaten world light-middleweight champion) and William Joppy (32-1-1, world middleweight champion) in his last 2 fights before Hopkins. Wright had been impressing at middleweight for years (Hop's career-long weight div), and as someone said earlier, his style was not reliant on size- not that he was giving away that much size against Hopkins anyway.


I rate Calzaghe's win over Kessler as better than any of Hopkins's wins - I just don't see what Kessler has done to make you rate him so highly. Was a title-holder for a couple of years. Two good wins over Mundine and Andrade, decent win over Beyer. He and Kessler were both natural supermiddleweights I give you, but beating a good solid supermiddleweight champion is nowhere near as good as Hopkins's win over Trinidad IMO. Yes Trinidad was coming up in weight, but he was a huge welterweight when he was there, if you check his physical stats, he was not small for a middleweight at all. Trinidad was p4p#2 at the time, Kessler was nowhere. Hopkins win over Trinidad would have been the same if Kelly Pavlik had moved up to fight Calzaghe, and Calzaghe had dominated and stopped him- ie, an undefeated champion who was champion at the weight division directly below, and was top 10 p4p. But Calzaghe didn't do this, he just unified v a good supermiddleweight champion, nothing more. To me, the Kessler win is on par with Hopkins's win over Glen Johnson (32-0, ie a very good fighter from his own weight division, and I'd take Johnson to beat Kessler now), and only slightly better than Hopkins's wins over guys like Keith Holmes and Syd Vanderpool, and that's only because Kessler brought 2 belts to the table.

 

Same here. I scored it objectively, and I gave it to Hopkins by a razor-thin margin. I won't argue with anyone who gave it to Calzaghe though, it's just a matter of how you score fights. If a guy flurries against your elbows or misses for 20 shots in a row, I see nothing achieved but activity. If the guy defending brilliantly and frustrating that puncher then gets in 3 or 4 clean shots, IMO he has won that exchange. But if you go with workrate, the 1st puncher won. Fair enough.

 

The body ages though. You can't argue with Old Father Time my friend.

 

What an achievement. He's only had 3 good opponents in his life, 4 if you count a severely faded Eubank. But I don't.

 

I don't give points for wanting to fight, I give points for clean punches landed, and significant punches. Nor do I keep in mind a guy's previous performances or tactics, or my opinion about fighting style, when I'm scoring, I just score the fight as I see it. I don't want to argue about it though, our views of scoring are just different, no big deal.