How did Kessler lose to Calzaghe?

Calzaghe was a grandmaster of the art of boxing, he simply had too many tricks up his sleeve for Kessler to pull it out.

People have to go and watch that fight again, Kessler showed an immense heart and a ton of courage, he won the twelfth round and hurt Joe.

Kessler is finally starting to create his own story, and I expect him to have learned a few tricks from the grandmaster. Kessler will brutalize Carl Froch, mark it down and put your money down on it :smoke

 

What people (American) don't want to realise is that Calzaghe has as much claim as anyone to consider himself an ATG and a Top 20 no less.

Throughout his career, he adapted to find ways to win fights that he should have otherwise lost. When he needed to bang someone out, he banged someone out. When he needed to box, he boxed, When he needed to go dirty, he went dirty.

He faced another master of the craft in Hopkins and found himself capable of getting past the defense and winning in my view, a decisive victory due to shutting down Hopkins whenever he started his work.

I'll be interested to see Kessler's progress. If he wins the tournament without a loss, Calzaghe gets yet another guy who performed after losing to him.

 

Froch: "I look forward to fighting Kessler in this tournament. I actually cheered for Kessler in one of his fights - the one against Calzaghe. I wanted Kessler to win, and he almost did - until he stopped throwing punches. I don't know if he tired or got an injury."

Calzaghe, Kessler and Froch all say the same thing. Calzaghe beat Kessler on one thing: Stamina.

And Kessler has really good stamina usually, but Joe just has phenomenal stamina. When the stamina goes and he throws less it may look like he doesn't move, or adapt or something, but all of these issues are not in themselves the issue - the issue is that he tired.

 

Three factors led to Kesslers loss.
- Calzaghes high workrate won him the fight. As soon as he found out that Kessler lacked precision at high speed - Calzaghe let it go.
- Kessler lost a lot of angles due to his back injury. The left hook was abscent - and he was hurt by bodypunches.
- lack of sparring due to a handinjury.
It was a 75% Kessler that gave a 100% Calzaghe a very good fight.
A 100% Kessler may have won - we´l never know.
Calzaghe was something special - at 100% Kessler would´ve opposed a 200% Calzaghe !!

 

The Kessler-Calzaghe bout was a classic demonstration of a text book boxer vs. an Unorthodox fighter. In any sport, the top guys tend to have certain X factors which sets them apart from the rest. Calzaghe had tons of experience against Kessler type fighters where as Kessler had non because no one really fights like Calzaghe.

 

I think people clumsily say Calzaghe beats everyone on stamina and I don't think this is true. It's ONE of the reasons he used to win, but he had massive skills, speed and ring intelligence - especially the ability to adjust to his opponents strengths/weaknesses.

Froch is someone who wins by stamina, that is the only thing which won him the Taylor fight. Froch without stamina would lose the fight against Taylor everytime.

 

Look, people can talk stamina all they want but the fact remains - go back and review the percentages of jabs landed by Calzaghe vs Kessler in that fight.

Joe's stamina works solely because he breaks his opponents down. A thousand papercuts sting like a ***** and he does sit down on the odd shot, as Kessler's ribcage will tell you.

Give him fixed hands and 4 years off his clock and he's the complete package. Intelligent, Great Movement, Handspeed, Chin, Heart, Always in shape and never has an off night.

 

Everytime someone brings up an argument like this, I laugh. Calzaghe with his constant hand injuries and the fact that he cannot punch with full impact without breaking his hands... vs an injury that was talked about solely after the fight.

ps. Find me a single clip of Kessler throwing a tight left hook - it's not a punch he possesses.

Also, ps - 100% Calzaghe hasn't existed since the days that he could bang fighters out in a round or two.

 

an injury talked about after the fight, are you in any way insinuating it was false.?

 

Calzaghe had superb adaptability and great punch estimation especially vs. one rhythm textbook fighters. After a few rounds, he just saw everything coming and was slick and busy enough to find his way to land punches, mixing up 'slaps' and hurting body/head punches. Took quick, too slick, too mobile, too many angles, too good sense of distance, Kessler was took out of him comfort zone, and no matter what he came up with (let the jab go and came up with the uppercut, let boxing go and started brawling etc.), Calzaghe adapted well. Truly one of the best performances of the decade, the tournament will show why.

One thing I always noted about this fight: despite being outsmarted, Kessler still fought a very good effective fight which would've made him the winner if Calzaghe wasn't so busy. He landed the most punches ever on Joe, but he got hit by a double amount in return, so what can you do? Many people simply couldn't see Kessler, a very quick, highly skilled, superbly conditioned, defensively very sound, busy, precise, two handed punching machine losing, because he neved did anything wrong. Still Calzaghe found his way through, though little credit he gets for his adaptability that made Bernard Hopkins ***** and hold in the 2nd half of their fight, that between the late-fight punishing of Wright and Pavlik. You could tell it from Kessler's and Hopkins' face in the last rounds. They just didn't have a clue what happened to their successful boxing, and I'm not even mentioning Lacy's and Roy's face - after just 2 rounds.

 

yes.

 

Kessler tried TOO much to force the knockout and throw hard shots. Calzaghe's unorthodox style took him out of his comfort zone and left him clueless. Kessler did finish strong and the 12th might be the best round outside of the 4th, when he landed that monster uppercut.

Also, Calzaghe completely neutralized his jab. That kind of helped.

 

They need to ban talking about Calzaghe for awhile. The anti-Calzaghe/pro-Calzaghe crap is unbearable. People overcompensate to such great extent you'd think the guy was at once the greatest fighter who ever lived - and the biggest fraud in history. He was neither.

TFFP nailed it. He's clearly studied that fight. There were all sorts of opportunities to light Joe up, and Mikkel failed to capitalize, over and over. More liberal use of the left hand - much more liberal use, and making Calzaghe pay when he'd miss or get out of position could have changed the entire topography of that match. Kessler had all the athleticism and dexterity to create those openings, he just couldn't close on them, and it was egregious.

 

Stamina.
Calzaghe is an amazing fighter. So is Kessler. Noone is claiming that oe is all stamina, because then he would have lost. He is a brillinat fighter. However, what made him break away from Kessler mid fight was (and Calzaghe, Kessler and others have said this very clearly) the fact that Kessler could not keep up the pace. That is pretty much as much a fact as it can be.

The injury.
Well, Kessler does not like to talk about that. However, the media got wind of this weeks before the fight. They talked to doctors and hospital personel who confirmed this. Kessler and Palle denied it. After the fight Kessler was asked why he denied it, and his answer was "because you cannot show weakness to the opponent. If Calzaghe knew I was injured it would only give him a lot of motivation, and I believed I could still win despite not having sparred for the last month leading up to the fight".

 

Intellegent post, but I think people need to remember the 1 thing that enabled Calzaghe to remain undefeated was his ability to adjust to his opponents weakness'/strenghs. Hopkins studies his opponents very carefully before fights (along with Roach) and they had a gameplan to beat Calzaghe. Calzaghe adjusted and suddenly the gameplan is out of the window.

Nut hugging aside Calzaghe IS actually underated, there's more hate than nughugging. It's a GREAT pity we never got to see him against better competition.

I think you need to remember that WHATEVER changes Mikkel had made Calzaghe would have made changes to compensate. So you can't just say 'if Mikkel had done this and this he would have won' because it's probably not true.

I think it's true with someone like Ricky Hatton who is 1 dimensional and doesn't have the ability to adjust.