~ Joe CALZAGHE v. Bernard HOPKINS ~ ANALYSIS and PREDICTION Thread ~

So...I watched the whole fight now.

I scored it 114-113 for Calzaghe, but I'm not a great scorer.

I thought Hopkins won 1 clear round - the first. The other rounds - well, they were all pretty close. I gave Hopkins 1 (10-8 ), 2, 6, 8 and 10. The rest I gave to Calzaghe.

The way the fight was fought, neither fighter deserved to win, really. I am not sure that was much of a boxing fight. Hopkins certainly didn't deserve to win. Calzaghe was the one trying to make it a fight so...most of the close rounds could have gone to him.

Hopkins did as well as could be expected. He found the target with that right at least 4-5 times very well, he kept great distance, his balance and footwork were excellent, he spoiled, he dived in with his head, he clinched, hugged and wrestled. He took that long break in the 10th, complained about blows behind the head..etc. In other words, he had a plan to spoil the fight and stop Calzaghe winning. He did that, I thought. However, I don't think he had enough to win the fight. He didn't do enough. He was very negative and for that, he certainly didn't deserve to win.

Calzaghe was disappointing for me. As I thought before the fight, the key for him was keeping the fight fluid at mid-distance with great footwork and high workrate of precise, hard shots. Calzaghe had physical ability to do it, even at 36 and the skill to do it...but he didn't. When Calzaghe feinted with his jab, Hopkins didn't fall for it. Calzaghe let Hopkins control the fight, early on - he let him stay on the outside too much, from where he dived at him with punches before hugging and hitting or he let Hopkins take the fight inside too much. It took him too many rounds to adjust to the right length...Enzo kept on telling him to do it, but he wasn't doing it. Calzaghe seemed flatfooted and lethargic, his punches lacked power and precision and he was "slapping" too much - quite ineffectively - in those clinches. Tactically, he was naive and it took him a long, long time to do what he should have been doing much earlier. It seemd that his success was due quite a bit to Hopkins tireing down the stretch too...

Hopkins though was a disgrace. In trying to keep Calzaghe from winning the fight, he was decreasing his own chances of winning the fight. He was too smart for his own good, because, whereas he would have been given him a lot of credit for his ring-generalship, footwork, change of pace, balance, tactics and strategy implementation if he had fought more, given that he didn't...all those things count for fairly little. Hopkins should have given it his all for 6 rounds or so, winning them all, and then continue making it into a fight. If he had done that, win or lose, he would have been given A LOT of creidit. But he didn't do that.

Hopkins was never going to win that fight the way he fought but Calzaghe could and should have done better, whatever Hopkins tried and did. He didn't though. I was disappointed. Calzaghe looked faded, not just physically but also tactically. Maybe he didn't take this fight seriously enough and didn't train and prepare hard enough. Maybe he has faded fast since Kessler. But then...why did he look so sharp, fast and strong in training? More likely, he had a bad night...In any case, he didn't have much of a gameplan and even when Enzo (who deserved a hell of a lot of credit, by the way, because he did great in that corner) repeatedly told him what to do, Calzaghe seemed content to just let another round go by, saying: it's not a fair fight, he's a cheat...

Maybe it's time for Calzaghe to go for a spent force like RJJ rather than someone in their prime next.