Joe Calzaghe and super six

Joe did not lack self-belief. All fighters feel a certain amount of fear but Joe was a very confident fighter, something which was plain to see whenever he fought. Frank ****** said he'd never met a fighter with such self-belief in his life. The only time he lacked self-confidence was when he'd suffered injuries during training and felt like he wasn't going to be able to perform at his best. He had a string of bad performances against Reid, Thornberry, and Starie earlier on in his career due to injuries and lack of sparring and he received a lot of criticism for his performances in those fights and he really took it to heart. After that he vowed never to enter into a fight again unless he was fully fit, hence why he subsequently pulled out of so many fights and was labeled with the ''Sick note'' tag. He only sparred 14 rounds for the Reid fight and I don't think he did any for Thornberry and Starie. He had to try and blag it and make out he was injury free and training had gone good, but it was pretty much common knowledge in the trade back then that all was not well behind the scenes.

He injured his wrist a few weeks before the Lacy fight and wasn't able to spar for 4 or 5 days and got all paranoid that he was going to be entering into the biggest fight of his life unable to throw hard punches with his power hand. The injury wasn't even that bad and it healed up pretty quickly after a few days rest. However, during those 3 or 4 days he briefly toyed with the idea of pulling out and his dad had to talk him into it as he was adamant it was going to be an easy fight for him, even if he only had one hand. Let's not forget he badly broke his left hand in his previous fight and hadn't had a tune up to see how it would hold up with those small gloves on and much less wrapping than the industrial amounts he used to wear during training.

He was so paranoid about injuring his hands he used to put a sponge in his left glove on top of all that wrapping and wear those cartoon sized 20-22 ounce gloves too. The ironic thing is neither him nor his dad had a clue how to wrap his hands correctly and it wasn't until late on in his career that Frank ****** got someone who knew what they were doing to wrap them for him (Dean Powell). Up until them his dad used to do it for him, which probably explains why he kept ****ing injuring them all the time since his early teens. Can't knock an injury prone fighter for wanting to enter into a fight with two healthy hands.

As the other chap alluded to, Joe's self-confidence was one of his greatest strengths. One thing about the B-hop fight a lot of people don't realize is the amount of pressure he would've been under to win. Ricky Hatton had been whooped by Floyd over there 5 months earlier, Clinton Woods had just lost to Tarver over there the week before the B-hop fight, and both of his stablemates Enzo and Gavin Rees had lost their world titles to Haye and Kotelnik respectively a month prior to that. Fighting in the US for the first time, especially on such a huge stage, would've been nerve-racking enough for Joe, who was essentially a pretty shy and introverted charcter, but having all that extra pressure on top of that can't have been easy. And that pressure would've increased ten-fold after getting dropped on his ass in the first round. That's why it took him a few rounds to settle down and get into the fight, as soon as he did it was a different story.

 

Thanks.

 

Like I said, can't knock a fighter for wanting to go into a fight with two healthy hands, especially for an injury-prone one who'd badly underperformed in the past, and very nearly lost, due to suffering injuries and lack of sparring. There was an awful lot riding on the Lacy fight and had he lost the Yanks would've labeled him as another overrated Eurobum and written off everything he'd worked so hard for as a sham, so it's totally understandable that he didn't want to enter into the fight with a major handicap. Unlike some fighters, Joe liked to give the crowd their money's worth and I don't think winning wasn't enough for him, he wanted to look good doing it too, which he obviously wouldn't have been able to do had he fought with one good hand.

I don't think he ever used the glass in his ice cream as an excuse for his performance in the Reid fight to be fair. It's true about him being ravaged with injuries throughout that period of his career though. Things started going pear shaped for him after making the first defence of his title against Sobot, which prevented him from sparring for his next defence against Juan Carlos Gimenez, and he didn't fully recover from them until he fought Omar Sheika, whom he pulled out of fighting on 3 occasions due to injuries by the way. And it's also true about him only sparring 14 rounds for the Reid fight, the commentators even mention during the fight that there had been rumours leaked from Cardiff that he had to curtail his sparring sessions early because of elbow and wrist injuries. I remember reading about all the injury woes he was going through at the time in the press back then too. He underwent surgery on one of them prior to that fight too, hence why he'd been out of action for 10 months. Reid certainly seemed to be aware of this as the dirty ****er locked Joe's arm up and violently twisted it on a couple of occasions early in the fight. lol.

He got caught with a huge shot against Mitchell and was dropped and hurt, that's boxing. It happens to the best of them. He fought with a very aggressive and sometimes reckless style and it's testament to the strength of his chin he was only off his feet 3 time times in his career, both amateur and pro (I don't count the Jones KD as a legitimate one). He was going through a very acrimonious and messy divorce when he fought Salem and he wasn't in the best frame of mind to be fighting. He said he'd never felt so disconnected in a fight in his life as he was for that one. And Salem was as filthy ****er as you could hope not to meet and his excessive fouling (mainly in the shape of his flagrant use of the head) really infuriated Joe. He fouled him repeatedly from the get go and if you watch the fight you can see he thrust his shoulder into Joe's face a few seconds prior to the KD, which clearly angered Joe - he even complained loudly to the referee about Salem's dirty tactics straight after that - and he rushed in recklessly and got caught with a big right hand and went down.

I agree about Enzo being a ****ing lunatic. Some of the **** he comes out with makes no sense at all. He's totally unintelligible half the time. lol.

By the way, I know you're not a hater. I've been around here ages and I've read a fair few of your other posts you've written about him before. :good