How Good Was Joe Calzaghe * really *?

We see things exactly the same.


This is always how I’ve always viewed things:

Ricky Hatton’s skills never matched his ambition.

Whereas Joe Calzaghe’s ambition never matched his skills.


Joe would never have fought Manny and Floyd, had he have been in Ricky’s position.

Joe fought WBO guy after WBO guy, in bogus WBO world title fights, when those WBO guys literally weren’t even world level fighters.

And he did it over and over, whilst whining that he was missing out on career defining fights.

Showtime wanted him to fight in America, but he never went, citing a fear of flying.

Instead of doing anything proactive to try and change his circumstances, he starved himself in order to remain at SMW in Britain, in order to fight a guy like Mario Veit twice.

He had zero ambition to push himself to the limits like Ricky did.

Now if he’d have been honest like Eubank, he’d have not gotten any criticism from me ever.

I respected Eubank’s honesty, in that he was just content to defend his WBO title.

The criticism of Joe, came from his continued whining of wanting guys like Roy etc, whilst at the same time, he was repeatedly fighting those unknown Euro level fighters in Britain, where he was under the radar of America.

 

It is frankly ridiculous for anyone to suggest that he was obsessed in breaking America.

He had a 15 year career, and only went there in his final year.

He was dropped by Showtime for not wanting to go there.

Bruno went.

Benn went.

Ricky went.

Naz went.

Joe was the only one of that era who didn’t go.

So he wasn’t in any way obsessed with breaking America.

He was just content to fight in Britain, where for the majority of his career, he was more than happy to fight whoever Warren and the WBO put his way.


Now as far as I’m concerned, that’s an actual fact, and not even opinion.

We have the proof of that:

1. He made 21 defences of his WBO title.

2. He’s bragged numerous times of his number of defences.

So nobody should be fooled in thinking that he had to fight those guys.

He was happy to fight those guys.


He was a great fighter, but he wasted years of his career.

Over the years, I’ve actually found that most people who proclaim his greatness, aren’t actually aware of who he fought and when.

He has a very weak resume for someone who was so talented.

 

I always enjoy reading your posts.

The counter to what you have written, is simply that Joe spent 14 years at the weight, which is longer than any other fighter who fought in that division.

Joe should have the best stats there.

However, the last time I checked, out of Joe’s 45 opponents, only around ten of those were world level/top fighters.

All of the others were domestic/European level.

He really does have a weak overall resume.

 

Saw him live three times. One of the most impressive fighters I have ever witness. His greatness was wasted on his countrymen.

 

He can’t be anywhere near a top 100.

 

Some of them weren’t great.

He had a bit of a disaster with his US debut on Showtime.

 

Again, he was only expected to do that, as the US fans had hardly seen him.

He was simply unknown to them.

I don’t believe that the British fans had Joe down as being such an underdog.

For the British fans, it was them questioning who Lacy had beaten.

Yes, it was a masterclass.

Joe deserves huge credit for the win. And I would agree that it had to have affected Lacy both physically and psychologically for the rest of his career.

It was similar to what Carl Froch did against Lucian Bute.

 

Fighters also milk belts when they’re content.

 

His greatness was wasted against all of those European level fighters who he fought.

Guys who literally weren’t world level fighters.

 

Cheers mate, likewise.

Yes, agreed being a world titlest at SMW and winning every fight he ever had is an advantage when compiling a deep resume, relatively speaking, at the weight.

I'll respectfully give you the same challenge, is there another boxer whose wins at SMW you could list from 1 to 20, whose wins from 8 downwards are better than Calzaghe’s equivalents?

If you list out Calzaghe’s and Ward's best wins at SMW, best win at 1, second best win at 2, and so on, I believe that Sakio Bika will appear on Ward's list before he does Calzaghe’s, as he did when I completed that same exercise.

If Calzaghe has a weak win resume at SMW, then in terms of its strength in depth, its the least weak in history.

Granted, based on fights in their respective entire careers, RJJ, Hopkins and Toney clearly have far deeper win resumes.

 

Joe has some depth. But his overall resume is very poor for the people who are trying to rate him extremely highly.


Regarding your points, it is of course very subjective, but we’d have to look at the names of the best wins of each guy.


To me, Ward has a great win over Carl Froch. Because he beat him easily, with a double fracture of his hand.

Yet his win over Chad Dawson is tainted, due to Dawson having had huge weight issues.


Joe has his masterclass win over Lacy, and a very good win over Kessler.


Then it gets interesting.


Does Ward have a great win over Kessler?

it was an easy win, but most people say that Ward was dirty and that Kessler was faded.


Does Joe have a great win over Reid, who he barely beat, and who had losses either side of fighting Joe?


Does Joe have a great win over Eubank?

Eubank proved in the fight that his gas tank wasn’t empty, and he went on to further prove the same thing in 2 great fights against Carl Thompson at CW.

However, he was faded and injured, he’d only took the fight on 11 days notice, and he’d not fought at SMW in 2 years, or had a win there in 3 years.

So how do you rate that win?


How good is Froch’s resume?

Was his spectacular win over Bute great?


How good was Ottke’s resume?

What about his controversial fights, including his WWE handicap match up against Reid?


All of these questions are fun to debate.


Regarding Ward, to me, he doesn’t have a great SMW resume. But his wins over a prime Kovalev at LHW are monster wins for his overall resume. But that is only IF you think that he won the first fight and that he shouldn’t have been DQ’d in their rematch.


Again, I think that Joe has a decent SMW resume, but just a poor overall one if anybody is trying to rank him as being one of the greatest of all time, in an all time historical P4P list.

I have no real objection to anyone who proclaims him to be the GOAT at SMW, based upon his ability, accomplishments and longevity.

Again, I think that Joe could have a better SMW resume than the others that you’ve mentioned. But then again, that should be expected if he fought 10-15 fights extra, where he fought in the division for a longer period, which stemmed 14 years.

 

It’s an interesting way to look at it, but doesn’t this give more weight to just Calzaghe spending more time in the division? Like a career welterweight of any note by your methodology, even if a relatively pedestrian champion, would have a better best 8th-20th win than a much greater fighter who was ‘just passing through’ but more or less cleaned out the top of the division in say a couple of years.

For me, I’d lend a lot more weight to the top accomplishments (and also career lows in more prime years) than the depth of resume just for longevity’s sake in a division.

It’s sort of like ranking current contenders at any time. A guy comes along and beats the No. 2, 4 and 6 guys after feasting on cupcakes for the first 20 fights of his career is going to have a less impressive 4-10 wins than someone who has beaten a string of good journeymen but only fringe contenders.

And if you consider anything above say 163 to be super middleweight, I’d put Jake LaMotta as having a deeper resume than Joe. Granted, a good many of his wins are over welterweights but they’re still better names and regarded as better fighters in their day.

 

Joe's top 20 wins, in order, at SMW, look something like:

1. Mikkel Kessler
2. Chris Eubank
3. Jeff Lacy
4. Robin Reid
5. Byron Mitchell
6. Mario Veit - has a few citations as a poor opponent on this thread, I'm guessing because his upright style was made to order for Calzaghe and so he looked so vulnerable, but he was 30-0 and their first fight and 45-1 their second, whilst he holds wins over an unbeaten Jurgen Brahemer and Charles Brewer.
7. Mario Veit
8. Charles Brewer
9. Richie Woodhall
10. Omar Sheika - beat Glenn Johnson in his previous contest
11. David Starie - had beaten an unbeaten Clinton Woods a few fights earlier
12. Sakio Bika
13. Juan Carlos Gimenez - had taken both Eubank and Benn the distance, losing only 5 rounds vs Benn on 1 of the judges scorecards, Joe stopped him in 9
14. Evans Ashira
15. Kabary Salem
16. Peter Manfredo
17. Mark Delaney
18. Rick Thornberry
19. Will McIntyre
20. Tocker Pudwill - took a couple of rounds off of Ottke, stopped in 2 by Joe

Is this win resume underwhelming for a fighter of Calzaghe's quality who was a titlest at SMW for so long? Yes.

His top 6 wins at the weight are broadly comparable in quality to those of Ward and Froch.

Is there a SMW in history whose 8th best win at the weight is as good as Charles Brewer? 12th best as good as Sakio Bika. 16th best as good as Peter Manfredo?

I accept the top 6 wins of a resume are typically more material in determining its quality than wins 7 to 20, so this is a relatively small point that Calzaghe has more depth to his SMW win resume than I've ever seen him credited for, at least in the sense in the deepest in the divisions history.

 

All fair points.

If I ever took the time to do an all time SMW list, based purely on fights contested officially in that division, I suspect Calzaghe may just edge out Ward as my #1.

I suspect if I ever took the time to do a top 100 p4p all time list, Calzaghe would not make it, based on his resume. Which is a shame, because I think he may have been one of the best 100 boxers of all time, but he certainly doesn't have one of the best 100 resumes.

 

To answer the question posed in your first sentence - yes.

I did specify fights contested officially in the SMW division, in which case I think Calzaghe has the deepest resume in history.

There are fighters who boxed at SMW who have superior careers based on fights in all weight divisions.