Joe Calzaghe vs Chris Eubank

Calzaghe had good power back in those days.

 

The way Eubank bounces straight back up after the knockdown is hilarious, what a chin he had. I remember Calzaghe saying it was his hardest fight because he put so much energy into trying to finish Eubank that he was really struggling after 4 rounds.

 

could be that

I never found the courage to watch that fight, I watched the first round and it was ugly

 

Very good performance by Joe but was it worthy of being for a world championship? I doubt it.

 

Excellent punch, I dont think Joe was nursing his fragile hands too much during that stage in his life and Joe always had power. I remember the left hook to the body that froze Kessler and he started to hurt Hopkins (before B-Hop went into the fake foul routine)

People talk about Joe slapping and Ali did the shoe shine routine a bit as well but when Joe sat down on his punches he could whack and he was a fast SOB

I think a prime Joe beats Eubank by a wider margin but this was a good learning fight

 

Calzaghe would never have gone 12 rounds with a prime Eubank. Ever.

 

Of course it's worth discussing.Just because Eubank was a fool and didn't see he would have been better off staying at 175 and not taking the fight at all is a moot point.As long as you believe any weight issues were relevant to getting a full picture of the fight and not just using it as an anti-Joe thing to totally dismiss the win which would be unfair.

imo the Eubank that fought the cat was massively superior to this one in terms of sharpness, he was actually able to get punches off and keep his balance well.He was just too small for cruiser though.

 

Eubank's legs were weak at '68 (he'd lose too much too soon too late), no more so than against Collins in their second fight.

 

Has Eubank made you a millionaire or something? Talk about having you head stuck inside someone's ass. Calzaghe would have beat Eubank at any time. You can't fight for 60 seconds a round like Eubank often did, not against a fighter of Joe's class.

 

Even if Calzaghe were to lose vs prime Eubank, which is unlikely, Eubank isn't knocking him out.

 

Calzaghe is wide open to right hands, and if you let Eubank throw it correctly, -see ya!

Eubank even rocked him without throwing it like he wanted to, in real-time real life. And landed it almost at will, without throwing it like he wanted to. (due to knee inj.)

 

Eubank was past his best and took the fight at short notice leaving him drained but it was still a solid win for the up and coming Calzaghe at the time. The fight however should have been a stepping stone onto bigger and better things instead of the plateau it was for the next nine years.

 

guys i have a question for you. so i'm watching a replay of the bernard hopkins vs joe calzaghe fight. well in that HBO telecast, when Calzaghe was knocked down Max Kellerman said "in calzaghe's first big fight against Chris Eubank, he was also dropped early in the fight, got up and dominated Eubank."

the question is how can Kellerman make such a huge error in an HBO telecast? in fact, it was Eubank who was knocked down, not Calzaghe! they made it seem like the only two people to knock down Calzaghe were Eubanks and Hopkins. Kellerman didn't even mention the times Calzaghe was actually knocked down against Mitchell and Salem. did anyone else notice that comment in the hopkins vs calzaghe fight?

 

Calzaghe always had deceptive power. People were quick to dismiss his punches as "slaps" because of the way he appeared to throw them, but they still carried enough power to make his opponents tentative.

 

Yes, and I believe Kellerman also said it during his next fight against Roy Jones. In fact, I even remembering Kellerman saying it directly to Calzaghe during one of post-fight interviews (Calzaghe responded with a puzzled look as though he wasn't sure he heard him correctly).

As far as how he could make such a mistake, it's probably because he didn't follow Calzaghe's career that closely while he was fighting in Europe and on Showtime, and he probably did very cursory research into his career when preparing for the Hopkins broadcast. I've seen a number of instances of HBO appearing to do very poor research into fighters on their broadcast.