Joe Calzaghe is overrated

No better proof than the fact Joe Calzaghe is UNDERrated than this thread.

 

Lol!! Exactly

What he did against Kessler was beyond impressive. And Lacy was a ‘boogeyman’ until Joe dealt with him

 

How is he underrated?

If you’re saying that he’s the GOAT at SMW, then I wouldn’t argue.

If you’re saying that he’s one of Britain’s greatest ever fighters, I wouldn’t argue.

The argument, is to the many people who believe he’s a top 30 guy of all time.

There’s even a lot of people who I’ve conversed with over the years, who genuinely rank him as the GOAT, or at least in the top 10-20 of all time.

It’s absolutely mind boggling.

Everything I’ve said is true.

His resume is awful for someone held in such high regard.

His decade long WBO reign was terrible.

Again, to my knowledge, only about 10 of his 45 opponents were world class.

None of his opponents were prime ATG’s.

He spent years in Britain under the radar, where he kept refusing the opportunity to fight in America or at LHW, in order to raise his profile and to try and obtain the biggest possible fights.

It’s as though people are blinded by the zero, or they only started watching him from the Lacy fight onwards.

So from my own personal experience, I would say that the majority of people who I’ve debated, massively overrate him.

 

His masterclass against Lacy was amazing.

I give him a ton of credit for that performance.

The only issue was, Lacy was overrated and overhyped by many.

The U.S. fsns were looking for somebody new. And Lacy came on the scene, with his huge physique and his great left hook, where we had stories of him sparring HW’s etc. He knocked people out, and people were raving about him, proclaiming him to go on to greatness. He was going to be the future of the division etc. Exciting times were ahead.

The issue was, he’d not really beaten any really top level guys.

The other issue was, the U.S. fans had written Joe off, simply because they’d hardly seen him. They had no real knowledge of him. They’d only seen snippets of him on a few of Mike Tyson’s undercards on Showtime, with most not having seen him at all.

So you had a situation where Lacy was massively overhyped, and where Joe was massively overlooked.

So that fight shocked an awful lot of people.

And I was genuinely pleased for Joe. It was the fight that introduced him to the U.S. and the whole of the boxing world. The U.S. fans were simply stunned.

The problem was, this was 2006, where Joe was in the final stages of his career.

He really should have had this type of breakout fight much sooner.

He also obviously deserves a lot of credit for beating Kessler. Kessler was a very good fighter, and Joe was 35.

The only thing I would say though, is that like Lacy, Kessler hadn’t beaten any top level fighters either.

So to me, he deserves lots of credit for those wins, but both opponents were very good, but not great.

This is the issue I have with people rating him so highly.

The 3 best wins of his career were probably Lacy, Kessler and Hopkins.

And they were all fine wins, especially the Hopkins one.

However, there’s many other fighters throughout history who have wins as good as those.

So whilst I respect those wins, there’s a lot of people who overrate Joe based off of them.

Joe was a quality fighter. There’s no doubt about that. But there’s many other fighters who had superior ability, and much stronger and deeper resumes than what he has.

 

Honestly i've never understood the hype for Jeff Lacy just look at his record prior to facing Calzaghe.

He beat a faded Robin Reid and even that was controversial, he hit Reid on the break in which Reid should've had time to recover and Lacy should've been penalized. When infact the referee somehow called it a knockdown, and Reid had to continue fighting after getting dazed with a sucker puncher pretty much horrible officiating.

Lacy struggled against Syd Vanderpool in an even fight until Lacy got the stoppage.

Lacy had a very close/competitive fight vs Omar Sheika who's solid fighter at best.

Lacy had some other stoppages against other mid level guys like Pemberton, and Williams who ended up with a losing record.

About the only real genuine real world class fighter Lacy beat was Reid who was faded and as i said it was controversial.

Lacy got hyped because of his Amateur pedigree, and the fact he looked the part physically and he was American. But there was nothing on his professional record prior to Calzaghe fight that should've warranted the hype he got.

The supposed next Mike Tyson of Super Middleweight division shouldn't be losing 5 rounds and going the distance with the likes of Omar Sheika. That fight alone proves Lacy was never a real upper echelon fighter.

 

I think that the wins over Kovalev were better than anything that Joe did. And I also don’t believe that Joe would would have moved up to LHW to have fought him.

I’m sure many won’t agree, as many people think that Kovalev was both robbed, and then fouled out of the rematch.

I also give him huge credit for the Froch win, as he beat him pretty easily, whilst he had a fractured hand.

The win over Dawson would also have been great, had he not have been drained.

The Kessler win was also good, but he was dirty, and Joe had already beaten him.

I have both Joe and Andre as great fighters.

You could say that Joe had the deeper overall SMW resume, but that Andre has the better resume with his wins over Kovalev. That is of course, if you rate those as being genuine wins.

The Hopkins win is interesting. That was a great win on paper, even though it was an awful fight and Joe struggled with him.

I think they’re pretty close.

I also believe that a fight between them would have been a genuine 50/50 fight.

 

I agree entirely with everything you’ve said.

He was hugely overrated.

And like I said previously, they’d hardly seen Joe.

Joe had only been shown a handful of times on Showtime, and then later on HBO.

I can only really remember the following fights:

Ricky Thornberry
David Starie
Omar Sheika
Mario Veit
Will McEntyre

Then possibly Brewer and Mitchell.

He was under the radar of the majority of the U.S. fans and media.

They would never have written Joe off as much as they did, had they have been more familiar with him.

 

Exactly. Joe is so overatted yet would be the favorite against Ward. Riddle me that

 

Yet you have said that he was more talented than James Toney.

 

I think it depends on how high you rate him.

I don’t know if he’d have been the favourite over Ward.

It would have been a very intriguing fight.

It might even have been very dull.

Either guy could have won.

 

Peak vs peak, Calzaghe vs Ward would have gone the distance, almost certainly been close and the decision would have quite likely have been debatable, some preferring Joe's superior volume, others Andre's cleaner punches.

 

I think he was an excellent fighter and obviously one of the greatest from my shores. That said, I do think he gets a tad overrated by a lot of historians and the sport's hardcore fanbase these days. Not by enough to get in a twist over....But a tad overrated all the same.

Part of the reason I'm not really a Calzaghe fan is because I actually rate (or rated) him very highly on talent and ability. Hence I'm annoyed that it took more than 8 years for him to land a unification bout (which is absolutely criminal in the era of four belts per division), that he moaned for years about how hard he found making 168 while showing no inclination to climb to 175 where there were bigger and better fights available, that he acknowledged in 2006-07 that he'd not really fancied chasing Jones for a fight and that he'd never fight him now as he's shot and it would mean nothing, before gleefully making a Jones fight his grand farewell a couple of years later, etc. etc.

I also think some of his biggest fans get away with pulling the wool over people's eyes when they paint a picture suggesting that Calzaghe was seen as some kind of bogeyman who everyone was touting as the guy to topple the big names Stateside or even in Europe in the early 2000s, if only those big names had just stopped running away and ducking him. Let's just say they're being very economical with the truth there.

Obviously a superb fighter, excellent record, showed his mettle and class enough times to satisfy anyone that he was top drawer. But an all-time great, in the proper and pure sense? A legend of the sport? I'm sceptical.

 

Great post as always.

I’d like to see someone try and refute what you’ve said.