Joe Calzaghe vs Chris Eubank Better Resume

Thing is, you have seen it before and cannot argue against the facts.
Seems to really eat at you

 

but in his defence, if you possessed a title that was considered almost worthless when you won it, it would take you as long as 8 or 9 years before another champ showed interest in you.

Calzaghe did actually try to match with Ottke but we all know what a protected coward cheat of a man ottke was, ducking Calzgahe at every turn.

 

Eubank dominated the Watson (I), Malinga and Close (I) fights and was unfairly referee'd and judged against Collins (I).


What goes against Eubank is that he was never a convincing rematcher, probably because the first time he either dominated or coasted

 

Calzaghe didn't plan for this long reign thing, he just couldn't be bothered to train, fight or travel etc, in all honesty and was pampered to pieces

 

:roll:Yeah whatever. Baring the knockdowns he didn't particually dominate Close and Malinga either.

Eubank had quite a bit of unfair judging in his favour for example he never beat Rocchigina by 118-109 like one judger scored it and Dan Schommer was a terrible decision and in Collins 2 he got a sd despite he never won more than 3 rounds in the fight.

 

I agree on the Schommer and Collins II things, thought they both beat him by about seven rounds in those fights (and that the Calzaghe fight was a hell of a lot closer than that)...

 

Rocchi just covered up for 5-6 rounds in a shell... so Eubank sweeped those at least and it was 50/50ish in the second half. It was wider than a round or two that's for sure.

 

i really thought it was impossible to have your head stuck up as far in someone's ass as your is in Eubanks LOL

 

Just look at it this way ,you think Chris would have waited 10 yrs to challenge himself after his first high profile fight ? Yet people still think Joe had a better resume Look at who Joe fought from 97 to 07 to get a better picture than put that up against Chris's prime ! Can't beleive this has gone on for this long !

 

yeah i cant explain why Joe Calzaghe waited so long, but you need to remember he owned a really bottom end title. WBO was the bargain bucket title when he took it. And he probably knew deep down that he would get his arse kicked if he went up or down to a division deeper than still growing SMW, so cant really blame him for being happy with peaking at the level of Mario Veit, a guy whose only really success was with the crappy intercontinental SMW title (imagine how crap that title was back then!). If he was happy to peak at borderline fighters like that and earn just peanuts then its his choice. Its not really JC's fault that his division was weak, but try to imagine it like the supercruiserweight title is today - noone give a flying **** about supercruiserweight champions. it was a bit like that in the mid90s, noone decent cared about SMW titles enough to stay in the division for long.

If a **** like Sven Ottke can dominate it with some help from a bent ref then anyone decent could have ruled SMW for years if they were willing to stick it out in that division a few years.

If you owned the IBU title today (to which the WBO was equivalent back then) and fought in a small country almost all the time, then the best fighters wouldnt exactly be queuing up to take you on, you'd be looked on as a protected bum. Calzaghe is never a bum obviously,but he certainly looked it to people in the USA. Which is unfair to Joe, he had some decent assets and would def have beaten opponents like Ottke.

Who rates James Toney's IBU HW title? noone.

Calzaghe had some good assets and superlative fitness and the southpaw stance made him a fighter you might prefer to not to put the effort in prepare for, so theres another side to it in that who would want to fight him unless the money was good enough to motivate you to specially prepare for a southpaw?

 

Calzaghe was grossly overpaid, he earned $15,000,000+ from his WBO reign against Tocker Pudwill once a year

It's well-known that if it wasn't for Frank ******'s contract with Sky Sports and Calzaghe's contract with Sports Network, Sky Sports would refuse to have shown Calzaghe fights or ****** would've been tempted to ditch him mainly for pulling out of too many fights

 

Calzaghe has cost ****** millions over the years!

 

So Calzaghe who lives in Wales, in world title fights travelled to England 8 times, Scotland, Denmark, Germany & America twice
Eubank who lives in England travelled in world title fights to Portugal, Scotland, Germany, South Africa, Ireland twice

So I dont really see a great deal in that

 

From the dates you give,

Then Calzaghe had beaten these fighters who were then
- Lacy 5-0 in SMW world title fights undefeated SMW champ
- Eubank who was 13-2-2 in SMW world title fights and a better win than anyone Ward has beaten
- Reid who was 4-1 in SMW world title fights
- Mitchell who was 4-2-1 in SMW world title fights
- Veit who was 2-0 in SMW world title fights
- Brewer who was 4-2 in SMW world title fights

Then the wins over other top 10 rated SMWs
- Sheika coming off a win over G Johnson who KOd Green who Ward outpointed
- Mkertchyan who at SMW hasnt done as much as Abraham
- Starie who beat undefeated C Woods
- Manfredo
- Bika

Often forgotten is that
- Sobot was a sub for undefeated Salmaci
- Pudwill was a sub for Tate
- McIntyre was a sub for Echoles
- Thornberry was supposed to be a tune up for Collins who pulled out
- Hopkins backed out

Obviously Kessler, Jones and Hopkins came after