--- Rating Mikkel Kessler ---

Dirrels chin is 4 at best. Kesslers chin is 10 and ward's should be 6.

 

Hopkins knock kessler down? Are you high... ? :O

 

The problem with Kessler he wasn't prepared for the awkward style Calzaghe and Ward had. A prime kessler prepared for Ward's style would be as dominant as the Klitschko's are now in the HW. And that comes from a Froch fan

 

I'd bump Versatility up to 7, Power to 8.5, and Accuracy to 8.

Sum 95 rather than 92. Divide by 12, average of 8 (rounding slightly up) rather than 7.5 (rounding slightly down) overall.

Otherwise good rating.

 

Kessler injured his hand while preparing for Calzaghe leaving him unable to spar. SO he fought Joe with a broken hand that had to be surgically repaired afterwards and still he was competitive.

Had that fight been in Denmark and had he been uninjured I'm sure he'd have won a couple more rounds to take home the win.


We all know what happened in jOakland.

 

Accuracy should be 9-9,5

 

In his prime. It dropped off vs. Perdomo/Ward/Froch. It looked better against Bouadla, but maybe still not quite what it was.

 

You're just describing what happened the one time they did fight.

By that same token if Williams-Quintana II had never happened I could say "Quitana beats Williams 10/10 by darting in and out and harassing him with short jabs and hooks instead of loading up on the usual 'southpaw-killer' rights that would leave him open to PW's long-limbed flurries".

I always felt Kessler would have scrutinized the tape and made the necessary between-fight adjustments to win an immediate rematch (within a year or so).

 

Kessler fans are truly jokes. I wonder what its like to be enthralled to such an average fighter.

 

Think he'd beat Froch in a close fight - again.

 

Different type of adjustment altogether.

Calzaghe thinks on his toes, and was excellent at making mid-fight (even mid-round) adjustments on the fly, in real time.

He wasn't as much of a war room guy, with a carefully constructed strategy in place before climbing through the ropes. Kessler was.

Kessler's strategy got spoiled when they met.

Obviously he would bring a different one to a rematch. The question would then become "Could Joe's real-time on the fly adjustments effectively counteract whatever new strategy Kessler brought to the ring?". - and obviously that is something Kessler would take into account in the war room while devising the new strategy. So for every adjustment Joe could make, he'd try to think two steps ahead.

Joe was a master of speed chess. Mikkel isn't very good at that. Give him some time to draw up his battle plans, though... (especially against someone he's gone 12 rounds with and gotten a feel for, and of whom there's no limit of available Youtube footage...and someone who, let's be honest - while tricky and able to pull something new out of his sleeve now and then when required of him still did pretty much the same stuff all throughout his career, at least after his hands became brittle).