Hopkins vs Calzaghe (Observations on second viewing)

I've seen the fight twice, and that's more than enough times! I had it 115-112 to Joe. I've seen some claim Hopkins won the first 5 rounds, which I disagree with, I had Joe winning rounds 2 and 5, I had Hopkins winning rounds 1, 4, 5, 10 with the KD in round one. I think it was Joe's footwork that caused Bernard problems, look at how he was struggling to land his lead right from round 4 onwards. Hopkins defence was superb though, Joe couldn't land in combinations and Hopkins nullified his jab. Joe's best punches came when he would step in to draw a lead from Hopkins, then Joe would make him miss and catch him when he was out of his defensive shell, but Joe could only connect with single shots

A terrible fight, and I laugh when people say Joe should have rematched him, who on earth would want to see that again!

All time I rate Hopkins higher, but I always think Joe beats him H2H at any stage in their careers

 

They both deserved to lose.

Calzaghe couldn't land anything that was worthy of being termed 'a clean punch'.
And Hopkins resorted to rolling around on the floor clutching his balls.

 

calzaghe won.

Holding an opponent and faking injury is not what id call ''i bust him up old school style''

I'll never lose to a white boy

 

Who did he have it for?
I'm going to assume it was for Calzaghe as he was the 'aggressor'.

 

I've just watched the first 4 rounds and Calzaghe has barely laid a glove on Hopkins.

Hopkins doing all the better work on the inside. The right hand (followed by the head) is there all day long for B-Hop, as is the left hook.

Hopkins also doing a really good job of controlling the distance to. So far Calzaghe seems a bit bamboozled

 

I don't take into account blocked punches, so I had Hopkins winning by two or three points at the time. I have only ever rewatched round 11, which I give to Hopkins.

They completely nullified each other, so scoring aside and for legacy value, I regard the fight as a draw.

I don't think Calzaghe stood a remote chance of stopping Hopkins—see how easy it was for Roy Jones to cover up and take Joe's punches when he was gassed.

 

Does anyone know where I can find a decent HQ version of it on YouTube?

I had it recorded from the Setanta days, but that old box is ****ed, unfortunately.

 

Incidentally, how annoying is Cortez? Jesus, that man and his ego, constantly berating Calzaghe while Hopkins blatantly fouls!

 

I still think Hopkins just nicked it but it was a close fight and difficult to score as a lot of it was untidy. I still think neither fighter really got going and it was a let down.

Neither one of them wanted to take a risk and I suppose you could forgive Joe for that up to say round 3 as he had been down. After that though he seemed to have figured out Hopkins enough to stamp more authority on the fight in my opinion and did not. As for Hopkins,he acted as though scoring an early knockdown had made it a win already. He did what he thought was enough to win rounds. Im glad it was not scored a draw which would probably have been fair as we would have had to sit through it again.

 

That pretty much sums it up for me.

 

Agree with macho grande, good description of the fight and put simply.
No way was Joe stopping Hopkins and your use of the Jones fight as for why was good. Good post Briggs!

 

This and the hatton fight shows how much of a incompetent joke joe cortez was. How can a ref change his opinion so much of what he lets fighters get away with in less than 4 months. He was either biased or corrupt either way im glad hes retired.

In regards to the fight i think joe won it on work rate alone. I just don't think hopkins threw anywhere near enough.

 

Obviously we score a fight round by round and I'm all for the cleaner work but I'd hate to see anyone win a fight in the manner he fought it. Joe edged it for sure.

One thing I noticed that hasn't been mentioned was how small Calzaghe looked to me. It was his first fight at LHW and I'm not convinces he'd grown into the weight. He looked totally different against Jones and seemed to punch harder (not sure if this was because Hopkins wouldn't let him plant his feet and he had to outwork him instead.

I think it's a credit to Hopkins to say that he lost a razor thin decision against one of the top two (Lewis) post war British fighters at the age of 43. I'm not sure what other adjustments he could have made, as mentioned above, Joe's cutting off of the ring (for someone who prefers to counterpunch) was great and forced Bhop to work for 36 mins.

That said, Calzaghe was also past his prime though IMO.

 

joe's 'slaps' must have been working as i remember hopkins walking to the wrong corner after a few of the rounds - roach even used this as a reason for hopkins to retire after the fight

ref spoiled the fight by letting all that fcukig holding and ****