People of England: who had the better career closeout, Calzaghe or Lennox?

Yep years , im more a classic, World & Lounge lizzard.

 

Brilliant. Don't come back to soon.

 

I'd rate Lewis higher. Both great fighters, though.

I see some Joe bashing going on. I get that he has a lot of low level names on his resume. This is to be expected from someone who had a long reign. Hopkins, Louis, and Wlad all had some uninspiring opponents on their resumes, too.

There could be an element of Joe not making enough effort at times to get out of his comfort zone. This is one of the biggest problems with Warren; he has always been safety first, and back then, he loved a soft WBO title reign (still does, to be fair). As for Joe, outside of leaving Warren and setting himself up with an American promoter, there wasn't much else he could do. Warren was by far the biggest promoter back then in Europe.

Joe is getting a lot of flack for staying in his comfort zone, but it goes the other way, too. He was in the who needs him club. A high risk / low reward fighter, particularly to the Yanks. Obviously, with making fights it's all “He said, she said”, so you can only go off rumours, but wasn't a fight with a prime Hopkins all but signed before Hopkins greatly increased the money he wanted right before he was about to sign the contract? Yes, Joe probably could have done more, but for many years top fighters were not calling out Joe.

Overall, Joe had some decent wins during his long reign, and from Lacy onwards, he really picked up his game. Still, I get the complaints as there are some noticeable names missing from his resume. Ultimately, I think Joe is the type of fighter who ranks higher on a head-to-head list than a resume list, as there is no denying the skills he displayed in the ring; lightning quick hands, great combinations, good footwork with quick feet, amazing work rate, great ring IQ and ability to adapt, solid chin, great at creating angles, and he had decent power before all of the hand injuries.

He did pretty well for himself considering he was trained by someone with no prior training experience, and barely any boxing experience, in a shite gym, with glass hands that meant he often couldn't spar much in training, and then they would break in fights.

 

It’s not bashing though.

Yes, of course everyone has a weak defence here and there.

Everyone.

That’s completely normal.

But we’re talking here about a guy who fought less than a dozen world level fighters in his entire 15 year career.

Now that is shocking for such a talented fighter.

 

It is, but due to his good wins, that is why he is rated so highly. Obviously, it counts against him to some extent the fact that there is a lot of dross on his resume, but those good wins certainly carry a lot of weight.

It would be like if Usyk had spent years fighting cruiserweight taxi drivers and bin men in Ukraine, then he rocks up to the HW division and beats Fury twice, Joshua twice, and Dubois. He's still a great fighter. Would he be looked upon as legendary as the actual Usyk who had a great CW career? Obviously not, but he would still be a great fighter due to his great wins, in my opinion.

 

Sure.

But what wins does Joe have, which are the equivalent of where Usyk has moved up to HW and beaten those fighters?

 

It wasn't a direct comparison. Usyk is a greater and more accomplished fighter than Joe. The point was about good wins bumping up an otherwise ordinary resume and not just writing the fighter off because of a lack of many top wins.

Joe does have some good wins on his record, though:

Hopkins. Yes, he was old, but he still had good wins after his fight with Joe and performed to a very high level.

Kessler. Very good, tough fighter. His fight with Joe was between the consensus 1 and 2 in the division at the time.

Lacy. He was shite after being dominated by Joe, but he showed promise before hand. Obviously, a guy who couldn't handle a loss and his flaws being exposed.

Eubank. At the end of Eubank's career, but still a good win. Eubank was 31 and lived the life of a pro athlete, so whilst he wasn't peak, he wasn't shot, either. People like to bring up that it was near the end of Eubank's career, but rarely mention that in Joe's 22 fights prior he had been 8 rounds twice, 5 rounds once, and 4 rounds twice. Every other fight ended between rounds 1-3. Joe was massively inexperienced going into this fight, not just in total rounds boxed, but also in level of opposition. Gary Delaney was the only decent fighter he had faced, and resume-wise at this point, Joe shouldn't have been anywhere near a world championship fight. Add in the fact that his gas tank was unproven, then this is a good win.

Reid, Woodhall, Brewer, Mitchell, Jimenez, and Bika were decent wins, as well.

 

All of those wins were good. It’s just that that’s pretty much it out of 15 years.

The Eubank win was very good. Because like you’ve said, it was his first huge fight against a legend of British boxing. And Chris did his absolute best to try and break him mentally before the fight. He tried to do a psyche job on him. But Joe didn’t buckle. That was very impressive to me. And Chris proved in the fight, as well as in his subsequent ones with Carl Thompson, that the tank wasn’t empty. He still had a lot left. But it’s a shame that he wasn’t in his prime.

I did have sympathy for Joe, that his era was after the great British era with Eubank, Benn, Watson and Collins, and before the S6 era, with Andre Ward and Carl Froch etc.

I just wish that Joe had pushed himself harder though, like Ricky Hatton did.

 

Joe was undefeated, but Lewis also beat everyone he faced as a pro
Joe fought too many cans for too long and only became great in the final stretch

Calzaghe was a great fighter, but he left it a little to late to be matched against someone like Lewis is one of the best heavyweights of all time

Definitely Lewis for me