Say Calzaghe beats Hopkins and retires:-

well I guess he would go down as an ATG, unbeaten. His best wins would be over a faded and weight-drained Eubank, by now exposed Lacy, Kessler (best win but we still don't know his exact level), and old and overrated Hopkins.

If all the ATG fighters were thrown in a barrel you would find Calzaghe as you were scraping the dregs from the bottom of that barrel.
does that sound unfair?

 

Funny how before Calzaghe took him to school most people thought Lacy was the dogs bollacks.

Calzaghe destroys Lacys confidence and now peopel claim he was over-rated. Truth is Calzaghe put on an epic performace to totally dismantle Lacy, he did similar with Kessler and no doubt he will make Hopkins look like a little kid.

Hopkins is nothing special... oh sorry he is special, he can bore you within the first 2 rounds with his **** style.

 

If he beats X he goes down as one of the greatest fighters ever. The maths is easy. He beats a top 5 middleweight, he himself is the best super middleweight ever, he is the man in two divisions, he is undefeated and then you can throw spice in with numerous belts, defences, longevity etc

Calzaghe is the best super middleweight ever. His legacy is set. Only losing at 168 could affect him now. Beating X would be big.

Personally I'd like to see him go to 175 and beat X, then have a going away party against Woods. That would give his 175 career some depth.

 

I hope they keep Woods out of it. That fight would do nothing in terms of legacy, the only thing it would do is give woods a decent payday.

Woods is not a big draw. I would rather see JC fight a shot Roy Jones than Woods.

 

About as ATG as say, Ricardo Lopez, maybe a bit more.

JC has ew fights left in the locker if u ask me, hopefully he can get them i think he needs Hopkins and someone else, Taylor or Pavlik i reckon.

 

coming from a different angle, i think where joe stands historically could be impacted by how well kessler does going forward. if kessler fights another 5 years or so and completely dominates at smw and lhw, then joe's win will be seen in an even better light.

right now though, a win against bhop followed by retirement will leave joe as one of the top 2 british boxers in my lifetime. fighting on to beat 2 or 3 more world level fighters like dawson / pavlik / taylor / winky, would put him at number 1.

 

Hopkins and Dawson/Woods. Especially if Dawson was to beat Diaconu and/or Erdei in between.

Woods is a good bloke and deserves a decent payday. I'd much rather he got one against JC than Froch.

 

edit

 

That sounds about right to me.

 

He will go down as the greatest SMW ever, with only Roy beating him in h2h.

His legacy depends alot on how well Kessler's career goes. He spent too long fighting in Wales against mandatories for me. He should have been braver and fought the top contenders abroad earlier in his career.
He only realised this after the Bika fight.

 

I'm not sure that is true. He has fought mandatories in Denmark and Germany.

Joe just never got the people interested so they paid no attention.

Thanks to Joe being as good as he is, he has forced people to take notice, plus Warren has put in some good work to get him noticed.

 

That will be how he is remembered, but i think he'll also be remembered as an extremely talented fighter that never quite lived upto his potential.

 

Ive heard the fight is in jeopardy - F.W has been turned down twice now & i believe they may be looking for a new challenger ... hopkins running scared again!