Question for SleazeNation (I'll leave dan-b out of it, he's a lost cause) is there anything Calzaghe can do before he retires to change your opinion of him?
Its less brave than logical though. Both at similar stages in their career. Both unbeaten prospects it makes sense to fight for a vacant title against an unproven opponent in that respect. What im saying is your using the Jones fight as an example of bravery only in the context of what he went on to achieve. He had did little in the pros at that point to make fighting him if you were a prospect such as Bernard Hopkins super brave. It was simply logic. Get it? Had Jones crashed and burned following that then of course you wouldn't be saying it was a brave decision to fight him.
If there was a way Calzaghe could prove himself I would still be a massive fan of the guy, still wanting him to get the biggest fight and win it to prove his greatness. No doubt about it. The reason I am really annoyed with him is for letting all of his biggest challenges disappear over a period of 10 years while he was fighting nobody's in Britain. I don't hate him as a fighter, I just hate what he did with his career.
You heard him say last night boxing is all about politics, he could have done more to get big fights, but it is not as clear cut as you make out.
It was one example of Bernard's courage that I believe stands up... but I'm only comparing Hopkins and Calzaghe here. In boxing as a whole, Hopkins doesn't impress me with his career choices very much at all. But compared to Calzaghe - Bernard is a f*cking hero.
Delaney was not a Olympic silver medalist and he wasn't a superstar in waiting. Khan and Roy Jones turned professional as probable future greats.
I suppose Danny Williams was brave getting in with Audley Harrison then on the basis of amateur success alone then.
My main issue is not even fighting at light heavyweight when the p4p #1 was there for years and years when Joe was super middleweight champion. There are other things he never did aswell, but that's the key point he didn't even attempt. I have a problem with that.
Not so much, Audley wasn't some young amazing talent that was going to destroy him, and Danny had already lost to Klischko, Samil Sam and Sprott in the previous couple of years. He didn't have a lot to lose. But Danny has my respect for going in with Vitali amongst other things. Big respect.
See thats the thing and I think we could perhaps for once come to an understanding here in this case, I go on what people have actually did considering the calibre of their opposition before I attach status to them whereas it seems that as long as a guy has a bit of a track record in the AMs and looks good destroying tomato cans and what not, you consider this to be a major challenge. I think I get you now.
You have to be a special amateur to turn pro as a superstar. To some extent Oscar, Roy Jones, and over here Khan are the only examples I can think of recently who without fighting a pro fight deserved respect for being unusually impressive amatuers. If Khan was American I don't know whether he'd have the hype he did here; but for a British amatuer, we've barely seen a Khan ever. Are you trying to get me off the Calzaghe subject?
I hate it when threads get started like this- Why didn't you just say which "bum" is this "bums" best performance.
:huh Why would I want to do that? Im not a fan of self proclaimed ownages but ive decimated you pretty much every time we have came on to that topic. And im not the only one thats said. Your responses are robotic, you never tailor them to the point or argument at hand.