the truth about bhop and calzaghe...

crap post. that is all

And in case you flame, i rate b-hop higher all time than Calzaghe, but only just.

 

If they were both put in a time machine to back when they were 28-32 years old, Hopkins would have destroyed joe.

Now look at it like this, if Bhops were 35 and Joe 43, how would that look

 

You forgot these 2:

RING GENERALSHIP

AGGRESSION

If Calzaghe's punches weren't significant, why was Hopkins so reluctant to engage?

 

It's not just aggression, it's effective aggression.

The four elements of judging are: 1. Clean, effective punching; 2. Effective aggression; 3. Ring Generalship; and 4. Defense. The emphasis is always on the first element and the other three are arguably equal to each other in secondary importance.

And Hopkins wasn't reluctant to engage. He never really does "engage". It was Calzaghe's good gameplan for the second half of the fight that didn't allow Hopkins to fight the way he wanted to, because of lack of space.

 

i had calsaghe winning clearly hopkins has always been smart by choosing his oponents so no surprise in skiping the supermidleweight

 

Exactly Bernard landed the harder and much more effective punches....Joe wasnt even landing his punches...Bernard def won dat fight

 

bingo. it wasn't a fight that made sense, Calzaghe was a nobody and Hopkins was an established name. either way i think hopkins proved what would happen if he was in his prime ( he woulda won quite easily)

 

Clear as day to any poster who is or was any kind of good/great athlete. However, the majority on ESB are undoubtedly f*cking lame crap non-athletes only competent at mouse clicking, keyboard popping, and cupcake munching. All ESB polls are automatically 50% off due to "demographic" homogeneity ("desire for an acceptable like-kind hero to worship" rather than any objectivity or ability to differentiate between those possessing great talent/athleticism from others that are merely good/decent at best).

 

i scored the fight for calzaghe by 2 rounds. horrible fight and one of the worst performances of b hops career. all we're gonna get here is a bunch of opinions and no kinds of "truth" will be revealed.

thread fail.

 

Then you must mean me, trouble is I have 20/20 eyesight lol
Calzaghe got a gift SD win he did not really deserve. 90% of his "punches" were slaps ( illegal inside the glove shots), add to those the rabbit punches i blatent low blows.
Calzaghe NEVER clearly beat Hopkins at all. That explains why he hastily retired and joined come dancing rather than be forced to rematch Nard

 

you are far too confident for your own good. The reality is athletes age at different rates, and have primes at different ages. Look at Usain Bolt - he's winning the World Championships at 22 years of age. Linford Christie did it when he was 33. (BTW Joe was 36 when he fought B-Hop).

 

:roll:

Well that is obviously true but it is not as if that is never a product of the environment or the circumstances surrounding that athlete's career (not dissimilar to the impact of being successful, living well, eating right, getting ample rest, living in a healthy place, etc., etc. in noting the aging differences or comparative rate of aging in people generally). Most ATGs are thrown into the fire early, repeatedly, and prove their worth/merit by their successes and, in nearly EVERY case, by their losses in tough battles as they aren't allowed to make cupcake defenses for a career and then cherry pick a couple of 40 year olds at the end. No, real ATGs are the ones fighting younger champions in their past prime years until finally losing, moving up divisions, and/or taking tough challenges for the most part and demonstrating and reaffirming their ring mettle (win or lose). [And, I'm not defending all of BHOP's comp as he (like Joe to the very end) got caught up with protecting that "0" but it is also true that guys like BHOP and RJJ were long considered great technicians and stars by the end of the 90s and as the older guys it was incumbent upon Joe to search them out (SHOUT THEM OUT - not merely in a local Welsh PTA meeting) WHILE THEY WERE PRIME. You still can't find 10 people in the United States that have a clue as to who Joe Calzaghe is and what he did for a living. Right or wrong, fair or unfair, Joe's not Ricky Hatton-like popularity didn't mean **** to any US boxer.]

That said, Joe was a pristine 36. He went from catching right hands with his grill in late '97 (in a fight in which he struggled in the aggregate (though he started well) and landed little cleanly, and was actually rocked in the last seconds of the 12th and had to hold) from a FAR past peak weight dropping Eubank (who never won a fight again, had lost 5 of his last 9 fights in total and none of those 4 wins were against a fighter with any pulse) to not even facing ONE SINGLE FIGHTER as decent as THAT (see description above) version of Eubank for nearly a decade.

BHOP was 43. No matter how you cut it, BHOP was ANCIENT.

That is a relatively less correct assertion. You cannot confuse "prime" as being the period of an athletes best performance with "physical prime". If an athlete were to take up a sport (e.g. boxing) at 35 (as an extreme example), then his "prime" would be whatever he managed to do in the sport during that period (before he then did less well and quit or retired). While it would seem odd to speculate on what might have been had he pursued a sport earlier it is also absurd to doubt that a younger version of that same athlete competing with the benefit of his "physical prime" wouldn't have been arguably more effective and successful.

Joe was much closer to his "physical prime" than BHOP at 43. Joe looked like a rank amateur through much of that bout as he didn't have the reflexive athleticism to maintain and control the distance (which is why he repeatedly clashed heads and grills with the older fighter) nor the athletic quality to throw punches with anything more than horrid technique and he landed little (and little cleanly - maybe 60 punches total).


Re: Linford

Christie's period of success or upward arc really began in the mid-80s covering from when he was about 25 and was ending by 33. Of course, one's physical prime often and/or usually coincides with one's greatest successes in a sport. But, surely you know that his career is tainted by ample speculation that he was using anabolic steriods and other performance enhancing drugs (as so many athletes were doing in so many sports during the period and continuing as a problem for athletics for a long time after - even to this day).

Still, the point is that one's physical prime is, in the GREAT MAJORITY - the norm, over before the mid-30s are reached. BHOP, at middleweight, was past prime BEFORE Trinidad.

It is not supportive to acknowledge the accomplishments of young athletes (Bolt, or Tyson, or anyone) to try and make the case that athletes age differently or have "primes at different ages".

GREAT athletes are often tested early and repeatedly. In many cases, they burn brightly at the highest level and fade out early from all of the battles and/or pressure (or success). It is absurd to suggest that because some athletes are putting out "prime" performances at 22 years of age that Bernard Hopkins is somehow the same man at 43 (because we all age differently) so that Joe's struggle to a split-decision in 2008 is indicative of what would have happened in '97 - '99 (for example). Let there be no illusion, 43 is not 33 (see Christie).

If I had to pick a winner on points I would be forced to chose Joe over BHOP in 2008. But, it was an ugly fight in which Joe looked like an amateur at the extreme and as the inferior athlete at the most generous. Joe landed little cleanly and only his stamina and workrate allowed him any edge at all. That performance was so embarrassing that Joe should have immediately taken the rematch. The truth is that Joe's lack of reflexive athleticism didn't allow him to maintain and control the distance against a 43 year old ATG. This is why they clashed heads repeatedly.

He could have aimed to set the record straight if he thought a better performance was possible.

THE BEST talent met each other as young men, in their physical primes, and though they didn't meet up in the pros in every case anyone who has followed US amateur and pro boxing got to see some combination of fights between Hopkins, RJJ, Frankie Liles, Gerald McClellan, James Toney, Michael Nunn, etc. None (no one) is ANYWHERE NEAR their PRIME in 2008 and any attempt at validating or justifying Joe's career vis-a-vis a couple ugly wins over two 40(+) year olds is insane.

And so I repeat:

 

Thats why you dont score fights.

 

Havent seen you for a while.
Good to see your still posting ****. **** jockey.

 

Adalaide Byrd does score fights.

And she scored it the same way as Marnoff did.