Jimmy Wilde, Ted Lewis, Bob Fitzsimmons, Freddie Welsh, Jim Driscoll, Benny Lynch, Jack Berg, Joe Calzaghe. He'd make the list a bit ahead of Ken Buchanan, Howard Winston, and Randy Turpin. Lennox Lewis, Anthony Joshua, Chris Eubank Sr, Naseem Hamed, Carl Froch, John Conteh, etc.
Top 5 Best British Boxers of All Time Top 5 ATG 168-175lbs Top 5 Best Fighters from 1990-2010 Just my opinion.
world class smw, questions over becoming elite reserve that classification. top ten smw, top five brit smw. would have made poor LHW though, he needed the protection of a embyronic division that helped him get a backdoor entry to hof for "length" of defences (in reality he made fewer recognised defences than froch, ward, lilles, sven and others that he is placed lower than). without SMW he would have got lamped out by several prime/elite world class LHWs.
One of my favorite boxers. Very underrated. World class. Was poorly promoted for some time but he was great. I encourage you to watch his documentary on Netflix. I though it was great
put it this way, before the Lacy fight, SRL didn't know who he was, come the 2nd round he was on his feet applauding him, that's all you need to know about how good he was
Speed, Adapt on the fly, above average power, Stamina for days, High Ring IQ, good defense, good Chin but his best quality was his ability to recuperate so fast after being hurt. When Byron Mitchell KD'd him, I seen him wobbling after he stood up only seconds later KD and Stop Mitchell. He's been hurt against Mitchell, Kessler, Reid, Bika, B-Hop, Jones, and always came back stronger. That's impressive. Would have loved to see him and Jones in their primes. Top 3 168lbs ever.
That's a fair point, although once he left Warren, the first thing he did was fight an elite name, abroad...
Top 5 SMW of all time. There are a few SMWs H2H that I believe would beat him but he's definitely at the top of the SMW division in a historical context. He had a style (volume and engine) that would've been difficult for damn near anyone to beat, even the guys that I'd favor against him.
One of the two best super middleweights of all time, people forget he beat Hopkins in his first fight at light heavyweight. Before you start saving he got a lucky decision against Hopkins, Joe landed nearly twice as many punches.
i think that underlines it twice as many to match hopkins quality. although to be fair joe was always doing that against someone with skill - kessler, reid both landed a higher % than him but threw less.
I don't think he was really adverse when it came to travelling. He was meant to fight on the De La Hoya/Trinidad under card but an elbow injury I believe saw him have to pull out. The problem he had was he wasn't a big draw in a division of even weaker draws apart from Ottke. Nobody was offering him more money to fight overseas. He simply fought were he could make the most money. It wasn't much as he usually only drew about 10K fans to Wales or wherever he was fighting but that was still a lot more than he would draw elsewhere outside of the UK. So he didn't venture outside of the UK much for most of his career. He could never offer Ottke enough to make the Ottke fight viable in the UK and fighting in Germany well look what happened to Reid and even then Ottke simply didn't want the fight unless he was going to get paid very well and the money simply wasn't there to lure him into a fight. And in the end Calzaghe did fight twice in the US at the end of his career when it made financial sense to fight there.
God yeah I remember that punch from the hard hitting Mitchell, thought Joe had just been decapitated the way his head swung round like that. But he got right back up and a few seconds later had Mitchell ready to go. But I think his best quality was his foot work. It's what allowed him to adjust in the Kessler fight and it's why he was able to put so much pressure on BHop. Guys like Tito and Pavlik had the work rate and power but didn't have the foot work to get to Hopkins like Calzaghe could.