The Definitive Poll: Ward vs. Calzaghe (****ysis and Speculation)

THIS IS NOT A DISCUSSION ABOUT WHO IS GREATER, WHO HAS THE BETTER RESUME, ETC. ALL WE ARE ASKING HERE IS:

Prime for Prime, who would win between Ward and Calzaghe if they fought at 168 in Las Vegas?
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Part I of VI

Primes:

Calzaghe: We'll call the '06-'08 version his prime, since Calzaghe never really had a prime. At one point he was a power puncher: 22(21)-0 coming into Eubank (and Eubank commented on his power after being put down twice), but I think that he was a technically better fighter in 06-08 than he was in '97, even though he had less power by then. He's kind of a Hopkins-type fighter whose prime is hard to pinpoint. So we're talking about the 168lb-175lb Calzaghe who was #2 P4P behind only Pacquiao.

Ward: We'll call his whole championship run his prime since we've yet to see Ward reach his peak. So we're talking about the 168lb Ward who was #2 P4P behind only Mayweather.

Opponent Ratings
0/5: Insignificant win against a non-contender who lost to other non-contenders.
1/5: Acceptable win against an undefeated/unproven prospect or a contender who had no good wins but only lost to champions/contenders.
2/5: Decent win against a contender with one good win over a champ/former champ/high level contender RECENTLY.
3/5: Good win against a contender/former champ with more than one good win RECENTLY.
4/5: Very good win against a proven current/former champ with a slight asterisk (Drained, past-prime but still good, etc.).
5/5: Great win against a proven champion with no asterisks.

 

SIMILARITIES

Amateurs
Calzaghe: 110-10
-4 consecutive schoolboy British Titles ('86-'89)
-3 consecutive senior British Titles in 3 different weight classes ('91-'93)
Ward 114-5
-2 USA National Titles ('01, '03)
-Olympic Gold ('04)

Notes: Calzaghe lost the Welsh Championship match in 1990. Ward did not participate in the 2002 US Nationals (Curtis Stevens won) and instead participated in the US U-19 Nationals, which he won. Ward beat Stevens in August 2002 and shut him out at their next meeting.

Rise to the Top:
-Both guys came up the ranks beating weak opponents. Ward had a near-catastrophe against Boone, while Calzaghe never had that sort of issue in any of his fights.
-Calzaghe won the British Title, while Ward won the NABO/NABF titles.
-Calzaghe came into his first title fight against a faded great fighter at 22(21)-0. Ward came in against a less-faded but not-great fighter at 20(12)-0.

First Title Fight
-Calzaghe dominated Eubank and put him down twice. Eubank won 2-4 rounds.
-Ward dominated Kessler but fouled excessively, winning by Technical Decision due to multiple headbutt-induced cuts around Kessler's eyes. Kessler won 2-3 rounds.

Title Defenses
-Calzaghe: a nobody, perennial challenger Ferreyra, former champ Reid, a nobody, Commonwealth Champ Starie, a nobody, former champ Woodhall, 2 nobodies, former champ Brewer, a nobody, former challenger Pudwill, former champ Mitchell, 4 nobodies. (10 Stoppages/3 Shutouts)
-Ward: a nobody, former challenger Bika, former challenger Abraham. (0 Stoppages/2 Shutouts)

Unifications and Defenses
-Calzaghe: Champion Lacy, former challenger Bika, a nobody, Unified Champion Kessler, Lineal Champion Hopkins, former champ Jones.
-Ward: Champion Froch, Lineal Champion Dawson, a nobody.

Pound-for-Pound Ratings
-Calzaghe entered at #10 by beating Lacy, rose to #3 by beating Kessler, and ended at #2 after beating Hopkins (#3).
-Ward entered at #10 by beating Kessler, moved to #5 by beating Froch, and to #2 by beating Dawson (#10).
-It is possible that both fighters were the best in the world at some point. Both were frequently argued as #1, since comparisons to Floyd and/or Manny were difficult.

Outside the Ring
Injuries:
-Both fighters were plagued by injuries throughout their careers, and both have entered fights with broken hands.
Being Ducked:
-Both fighters complained of being unable to get other top fighters to fight them. Calzaghe's complaints were credible (Reid, Ottke, Lucas, Beyer, Mundine, Catley, Sanavia, Vanderpool, Hopkins, etc.). Ward's complaints tend to center around fighters being unwilling to accept B-side status.
Ducking:
-Calzaghe avoided a mandatory challenge from Froch, choosing instead to unify with Kessler. Calzaghe also avoided a challenge from Dawson in favor of a money/retirement fight with Jones.
-Ward has avoided challenges from Bute, Stevenson, and Golovkin (due to their unproven status and the lack of money that would be generated) and is suspected of colluding with his friend Andre Dirrell to avoid a scheduled fight between them (Dirrell did not withdraw from the Super Six until AFTER the date that he was scheduled to fight Ward, and neither fighter entered camp for the fight).
Home Advantage:
-Both fighters are criticized for their lack of travel:
-Calzaghe: 24 title fights, 4 outside the UK, 17 outside of Wales.
-Calzaghe's two disputed fights were against Reid (Newcastle, Paul Thomas dissenting) and Hopkins (Vegas, Adalaide Byrd dissenting).
-Ward: 7 title fights, 0 outside the US, 1 outside of California, 3 outside of Oakland
-Ward's three disputed fights are Boone (Oregon), Bika (Oakland), and Kessler (Oakland). It has been argued that Boone and Bika may have deserved draws or wins and that Kessler deserved not to be smashed in the face repeatedly by Ward's head.
Promoter Issues:
-Both fighters had a rocky relationship with their promoters, who proved unable to secure the big fights that Calzaghe and Ward claimed to want.
-Goosen did manage to secure a spot in the Super Six for Ward along with a home advantage for almost every fight. This netted Ward 2 world titles and the #1 spot in the division over the course of 5 fights.
-Warrren did manage to find people willing to fight Calzaghe. They just tended to suck really badly.
Fan Complaints:
Styles: Calzaghe was criticized for a slapping/swarming style, while Ward was criticized for a safety-first/head-first style.
Weak Opposition: Calzaghe was universally criticized for fighting some truly godawful opponents, though he usually fought one decent former champ/challenger per year.
Inactivity: Rather than fight sub-par opponents, Ward took the route of fighting nobody at all. It turns out the fans didn't like that much better.

 

Journeyman-Level Wins 0/5 Stars

CALZAGHE

Sobot
McIntyre
Jimenez
Pudwill
Mkrtchyan
Salem
Ashira

CONCLUSION: These fights are only useful when compared with Ward's pre-championship era fights. So they aren't useful. Ward would have slaughtered these guys just as easily or easier than Calzaghe. The only anomaly is Darnell Boone, who put Ward down and should probably have gotten the draw. I'm glossing over this because Boone is a proven prospect-tester, knocked out Stevenson, had a close one with Kovalev, and has fought pretty much everybody from 160-175. However, Calzaghe fought more than a few guys at that level and NEVER struggled at all. Salem dropped him, but Calzaghe put him down in return and shut him out aside from that round (and Salem was a much better fighter than Boone).

 

Prospect-Level Fights 1/5 Stars

WARD

Miranda:
-Decision
-Never a good fighter but a perennial challenger.
-Stoppage losses to Abraham and Pavlik, later Bute.
-Good opponent for Ward’s level at the time.

Bika:
-Decision (Highly Disputable)
-Far from a great fighter, barely even good.
-Ward looked technically poor against him and may have lost.
-Bika has lost to Bute and Anthony Dirrell and his best win is Marco Antonio Periban.

Rodriguez:
-Shutout
-Not a good fighter (as far as we know).
-Not saying Ward shouldn't have fought him...the kid was a top 10 ranked fighter and undefeated. He just has no wins worth mentioning.

Green:
-Shutout
-Fun performance by Ward, just bullying and beating on Green. One of my favorites, because it's Ward's infighting and pressure at its best and I love seeing Green get beaten. Never gets old.
-Green had already lost to Miranda and was never a good fighter, but he had won 6 straight against nobodies.
-Green's next fight was a KO loss to an old Glen Johnson, and he was later KO'd by a severely diminished Kessler.

CONCLUSION: Calzaghe, Froch, and maybe even Abraham and Bika would have done the same job on Green and possibly stopped him. Calzaghe and Froch would also easily beat Rodriguez, though his durability threshold is unknown. Not sure how Froch would do against Bika, but Calzaghe was dominant and Ward was not.

CALZAGHE:

Ferreyra
-RTD (Calzaghe was the first to stop him, Erdei was the only other)
-Distance with Eubank, Benn, Galvano, Castro, Maske, and Duran (2 years before the Barkley fight, so that's not totally unimpressive). Basically a contender/journeyman who fought for a lot of titles, fought a lot of good fighters, usually only lost to good/great fighters, and was damn near unstoppable.
-Coming off 4 wins over very weak opponents.
-Not a bad fight for a young unknown champ's second defense.

Thornberry
-Shutout (with a broken hand)
-Losses to Ottke, Mundine, and Wharton
-Coming off 5 straight stoppages of guys with losing records.

Manfredo
-British Stoppage
-Losses to JCC Jr., Bika, and Lacy. Close losses and/or wins over Mora and Gomez.
-Not really a serious title contender but he only lost to champs and other contenders.
-Was coming off of two KO's of nobodies after two close loses to Mora the year before.
-Not saying Calzaghe shouldn't have fought him: It was supposed to set up a Taylor fight and get Calzaghe some exposure against an opponent US fans knew. (People actually watched The Contender.)

Bika:
-Decision
-Far from a great fighter, barely even good.
-At this time, he was coming off a Technical Draw vs. Beyer and had lost to Soliman early in his career.

CONCLUSION: These fights aren't impressive but they're comparable to wins over Green and Rodriguez, so we can look at the level of domination relative to the level of the opponent. In all cases where Ward and Calzaghe fought guys at this level, the result was a foregone conclusion. Ward shut them out, Calzaghe shut them out or stopped them. I want to give an advantage to Calzaghe for stopping Ferreyra, but Ward is not a stoppage fighter and Calzaghe was, so shutting someone out completely can equate to a stoppage imo. The Bika fight is a big deal when comparing Ward and Calzaghe h2h though…Ward doesn’t like being bullied by a durable guy. This is something we saw with Boone as well.

 

Contender-Level Fights 2-3/5 Stars

WARD

Abraham: 2/5
-Is F%CKING USELESS CARL!!! (Everybody looks like a technical genius against Abraham)
-Ward joined Froch, Dirrell, and Steiglitz in putting on a dominant performance against one of the most limited fighters in the division.
-Abraham has gone on to have an entertaining series with Steiglitz, but neither are top fighters at 168 and never were.
CONCLUSION: Ward looked good, but can you honestly say Calzaghe wouldn't have looked just as good? Froch looked like a damn wizard in there

CALZAGHE

Starie: 2/5
-Decision
-Had a recent win over Clinton Woods and was Commonwealth champ, so it was good fight at the time.
-Had been stopped by Francis and later lost to Ottke and Thysse

Sheika: 2/5
-Stoppage
-Had a recent win over Glen Johnson (during his journeyman stage)
-Later on lost to Lacy, Beyer, and Lucas and was stopped by Pemberton and Tate.

Veit: 2/5
-KO x2
-Went on to beat Braehmer and be stopped by Braehmer and Inkin.

Reid 3/5
-SD (Clear win for Calzaghe with a broken hand)
-Coming off 4 title wins before losing it to Malinga, winning a tuneup, and getting a shot at Calzaghe despite having ducked a unification with him while they were both undefeated champs.
-Only lost to current/future titleholders and was robbed by Ottke.

Woodhall: 3/5
-Stoppage
-Had only lost to Beyer and Holmes in title fights
-Had good wins over Catley and Malinga

Brewer: 3/5
-Decision
-Had been stopped by Echols and went on to be stopped by Mock and Veit.
-Owned 2 robbery losses to Ottke.

CONCLUSION: Ward and Calzaghe both dominated at this level and showed no weaknesses (the SD vs Reid was a clear win and Calzaghe’s hand was broken).

 

Championship-Level Fights 4-5 Stars

WARD

Kessler: 4/5 Stars
-Ward put on a dominant but sloppy performance. Kessler was totally blind within a few rounds due to headbutts, and Ward's strategy amounted to feint-feint-lunging jab-headbutt-rabbit punch-clinch-wait for the break.
-Kessler had 3 KO wins against Euro-level opponents after losing to Calzaghe. However, he also took nearly a year off during that time and considered retirement due to an eye problem.
-He came back with a great performance against Froch and then knocked out 3 more people, so we can't say he was shot when Ward beat him.

CONCLUSION: I don't think Kessler could ever beat Ward, but Ward makes it hard to assess this performance because he fought very safety-first and refused to actually box. It was his first title fight and he was the underdog, so nerves probably had a lot to do with it. To be fair, it was the ref's job to keep the headbutting and clinching out of the fight but he let it happen and Ward is not a dumb fighter, so why stop what's working? We know Kessler was 100% in the Calzaghe fight and was simply outclassed, while in the Ward fight we know he was not 100% and was fouled AND outclassed. It's hard to say how the fight would have gone if it was cleaner, but I'm confident Ward would have dominated. Would he do better than Calzaghe? Kessler won 3-4 rounds against Calzaghe in a clean fight and 2-3 against Ward in a dirty fight. I think we can say that Calzaghe handled Kessler better than Ward did (and fought a better version of Kessler).

Froch: 5/5 Stars
-Froch is really damn good, and Ward dominated him with a broken hand.
-Froch won a few rounds, but it was Ward letting off the gas more than anything else.
-Froch has wins over Pascal, Groves, Bute, Kessler, Dirrell, Johnson, Abraham, and Taylor (in order of importance).
-Froch lost to a diminished Kessler and struggled with everybody except Abraham and Bute.

CONCLUSION: It's clear that Ward is a level above Froch, but it's also safe to say that Calzaghe is AT LEAST a level above him. Calzaghe vacated a belt rather than face Froch, because at the time there would have been massive criticism for taking the fight. Froch was known as a delusional basic fighter with no good wins and would have no chance whatsoever. This is a great win, but it would be ludicrous to say Calzaghe wouldn't have at least matched it.

Dawson: 4/5 Stars
-I love this fight, Dawson was p4p #10, and it really did show new levels to Ward's game. However...
-Dawson was always mentally weak, was weight drained, was NEVER a good fighter against guys who could approach his level of speed, NEVER fought with a good gameplan, and ALWAYS appeared to just go through the motions.
-Dawson's only good wins were against fighters over 40.
-Dawson had already been shown up against Pascal.

CONCLUSION: After seeing what Pascal and Ward did against Dawson, you can get an idea of how Calzaghe would have handled him: Easily. Calzaghe, Hopkins, and Froch are better than Pascal, and Calzaghe is better than Froch and Hopkins. Froch and Hopkins were too slow for Dawson, but Calzaghe would have handled him much the same as Ward did, ESPECIALLY if Dawson drained to 168.

CALZAGHE

Eubank: 4/5
-Unquestionably a great fighter who was definitely past his best but far from shot: dropped a cruiserweight in his next fight.
-Can't receive full credit for beating a great fighter in his prime, but considering it was Calzaghe's first title fight it's a very impressive win.

Mitchell: 4/5
-Stoppage (off the floor)
-Exciting fight. Calzaghe went down HARD and got up to annihilate mitchell in the same round.
-Loss and a draw to Girard. Coming off a robbery loss to Ottke.
-KO wins over Liles and Siaca.

Lacy 4/5
-Super Shutout (Calzaghe received a 10-8 on all cards and three 10-8's on one.)
-Exciting fight if you like watching Calzaghe beat someone half to death.
-Undefeated champion and coming off 3 straight stoppages but had no signature wins.
-Went on to lose to just about everybody and was a visibly worse fighter after the beating.

Kessler: 5/5
-Decision
-Coming off wins over Siaca, Mundine, and Lucas, unification vs Beyer, beatdown of Andrade, and would later beat Froch.

Hopkins: 5/5
-Decision (Disputed)
-Happened in the middle of one of Hopkins' best streaks: Tarver, Wright, Pavlik, and later on the two wins against Pascal.
-Hopkins had no clear losses since Roy Jones 15 years earlier and was rated #4 P4P.

CONCLUSION: Ward may have been able to beat this version of Hopkins. It's hard to say. We do know that Ward beat the Dawson who beat Hopkins, so there's that.

 

Saves Bailey the trouble :yep

 

moar votes!

 

I think you're overrating Ward's boxing smarts. They're good, but he's not reinventing the wheel or anything. Most of what you say applies equally to Calzaghe. Ward is just more of a thinker than most fighters these days.

-It didn't take a genius to understand that Kessler had no inside game. All it took was a look at the Calzaghe fight, and Calzaghe figured it out in about 3 or 4 rounds.

-It didn't take a genius to figure out that Green sucked and could be manhandled by anyone. Johnson and Kessler found ways to KO him.

-It didn't take a genius to figure out that Abraham can be boxed from range easily. Dirrell and Froch had already done it, and if you can't outbox a guy that Froch outboxed...that's not even possible so I don't know what to say.

-It SHOULDN'T take a genius to figure out that you beat Bika by pushing him back and being the man in there...but Ward didn't do that and tried to win on his jab. It was a pretty clear loss/draw imo. Calzaghe took it straight to Bika.

-I give him credit for outboxing a good fighter in Froch, but Kessler was able to pull that off as well. Taylor did it for 11 rounds. Dirrell did it when he tried to. Groves was able to do it for about half a fight...

I think Ward is a smart fighter, but he hasn't shown anything to really make me marvel at his genius. All of those guys had been beaten before and had obvious weaknesses. He's a better fighter than the guys he fought and he beat them.

Except Bika for some odd reason. That one really stands out to me.

PS
Calzaghe had a comparable/better boxing mind (we haven't seen either one be outstrategized, but I think Ward's gameplan with Bika was poor and he didn't adjust) and comparable/better physical talent (neither guy has power but Calzaghe's handspeed/workrate/stamina/chin is superior).