Joe Calzaghe, overrated?

Only if the fight is on neutral ground or Ward will just run & grab / head butt his way to a win again :-(

Would be nice though because in a fair fight Bute would kick his ass!

 

if he was 'underrated' he had a lifetime to prove people wrong.

don't ever make excuses for any fighter who never pushed the limits of what he could achieve.

 

skill wise calzaghe is up there with floyd, p4p he would **** mayweather...why? the work rate.

 

your last sentence could be applied to stacks of boxings stars since the 90s tbh.

 

if you mean european ones, you're right, because they can shy away from the world stage and dictate their own terms.

 

1 - hopkins fight with calzaghe was sandwiched between 3 of the finest performances of hopkins entire career when he dismantled tarver, wright, and pavlik.

2 - it was calzaghe's 1st fight at a new weight

3 - calzaghe fought on foreign soil

4 - cortez delivered an atrocious refereeing performance to try and even things up, allowing hopkins to continuosly clinch (in alarming contrast to his refereeing of the hatton v floyd fight a few weeks earlier) and allowing him to buy time when he was gassed with the bull**** feigning of hopkins.


in retrospect, i don't think calzaghe gets enough credit for that win. hopkins was undoubtedly still doing the business at that stage of his career. factors 2,3,4 are all things calzaghe had to overcome in that fight and even though hopkins is not my favourite fighter, i've got to admit that he is strategically very clever, no one ever looks good fighting hopkins and he used every trick in the book to try and nullify calzaghes strengths (with the assistance of joe cortez).


as for prime calzaghe v prime hopkins, i don't know how anyone would think that fight would be anything other than very competitive. hopkins having to rely on clinching less with more youth may have suited calzaghe more and allowed him to impose his style more on hopkins than he was allowed to do in their actual fight.

stylistically i think hopkins and calzaghe are a bad match up for each other at what ever age they fought each other, both of them have something in their locker that can unsettle the other. hopkins has the ring smarts and calzaghe has the punch output to take any fighter out of their comfort zone.

 

i dont understand why people do this. seriously.

calzaghe used a fear of flying for years as an excuse not to go to the states - then when hopkins and jones hit their 40's and were in decline he jumped at the chance.

why don't you talk about why calzaghe didn't make two of the most interesting fights available while jones and hopkins still reigned instead of justifying a hollow victory over a great fighter who just lost to jermain taylor..twice.

 

if we say yes Joe was overated - will you stop posting such drivel and start posting on the MMA site - knucklehead.

Joe is a legend.

 

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- Jay Larkin, then Showtime TV Network's Senior Vice-President of Sports and Event Programming.



hopkins then went on to fight to fight the world renowned hakar 6 months later, turning down a career high pay day to pick up just $750'000








its hard to imagine any poster getting pwned any more convincingly than what holdmybeer just has been :rofl


wnedwnedwnedwnedwnedwnedwnedwned

 

yeah i've read that a million times.....

if boxing was just about profit and what a fighter had on the line, we wouldn't need federations and their belts.

do you think hopkins would have rejected that if he was a european fighter with no exposure internationally? no.

were all the cards in hopkins' court? sure they were.

was calzaghe a high risk low reward fighter? absolutely!

next time just post what you believe without all the childish dribble.
believe me, i'll be able to counter anything you want to say on this subject without all those emotes....

 

We'll never know how good he was. Could have been great but left it too late and Jones and hopkins were a combined age of over eighty.

Only after Lacy fight did anyone see the real Calzaghe.

Honestly he would more often than not stoop to his opponents level to win fights the hard way.Only when he was challenged, really challenged were we to see the best.

Unfortunetly Hopkins had lost twice to taylor into his forties
Jones was Shot and painfully hard to watch gunshy
Lacy was ruining by Calzaghe but after watching his fight with Robin Reid no one could call him world class

Kesller was a fantastic win but thats it really

Eubank was at end of his career,

Should a man who won only world titles in one weight class be regarded over others who have won titles in many? i dont know to be honest


in short id say hes overated but not because of his ability but because of his actual acheivments weighed against his reputation post retirement

 

utter drivel

calzaghe wasn't high risk / low reward, he was high risk / BIG REWARD, hence the career high pay day (at that time) that hopkins turned down :deal

 

well done.

 

who did Calzaghe fight instead when the Hopkins deal fell through?I dont think some people on this site actually were either boxing fans or Calzaghe fans in 2002. I remember most of his career especially on sky and on itv(which was nice) and i dont remember the clamour for Calzaghe to fight hopkins or jones or tarver or anyone like that.

Ive stated this before and ill state it again i feel sorry for Calzaghe because he was played by Frank Warren(Unbeatable Fav aginst limited opp for nearly ten years talk about Cash cow) but he has to take some responsiblity for his ambition and his so called fear of flying.

 

How many times have the great legends pfp Americans fought abroad?! Hopkins? Rjj? Floyd?

Hands up anyone?

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Look at these new bitches ala ward. The man doesn't want to fight o/s his home ****ing town? LoL

Calzaghe turned the whole "don't bet against a black guy" on it's head.
When he boxed ppl used to say "don't bet against that White boy, he will slap some ***** ass"

Sir Joe !