Why did Hopkins not move up sooner?

That´s true. Worked quite well too. He made a career that´s full of unique achievements and a decent enough resume.

Dawson´s mentally weak, the Pascal fight proved that, I guess Hopkins thinks he can beat him before even entering the ring. I wonder what Steward has to say about that.

Yeah, Dawson has some physical advantages but he is soo inferior in many others. I think Hopkins thinks he can expose that and use it to his advantage. Well, we´ll see. I´ll root for the old man.

We still might see that one after Dawson.

 

I love you too, sweetheart. :smooch

Who said Calzaghe was a ducker? Certainly not me. But look at his career, until 2006 he fought no one of note and fed of mostly bums - and most of them were actually Ottke leftovers. That may not have been his fault - at least not alone - and has to dow ith the circumstances but it is what it is. Deal with it.

And, yeah, Ottke was an arsehole - in and outside the ring - nevertheless he was quite a good fighter who acheived not much less than Calzaghe at SMW.

Oh, and you know what they say, insulting says more about the person who insults than about the one who get´s insulted.

Saying you want something and wanting it are two different pair of boots though. Fact is none of those fights happened then. Fact is that Calzaghe is the only constant there. Draw your conclusions.

 

:huh

I think that was not quite enough, I think he also did some more weight and strength exercises. Never got how you could be so much into running, it´s soo boring.

 

He weighted around 168lbs for many of his middleweight fights during the end of his middleweight reign which is not big for a middle and during most of his career he was around 164-165lbs on the night of the fight.

I think Tito weighted 168lbs by the time of the fight with Hopkins does that make him a big middleweight? Gaining 8lbs for a middleweight from the weight in to the fight is quite normal.

At best you could say near the last couple of years as middleweight champion you could say he was a big middle/natural super middle.

Calzaghe campaigned for a long time at super middleweight and was a natural super middle who would be around 180lbs by the time of the fight so throughout most of their respective careers Calzaghe would weigh a good 10+ lbs more than Hopkins by the time of the fight. That for me suggests quite clearly that Calzaghe was naturally the bigger man, Hopkins had to do weights under Shilstone to build up to light heavy, while for Calzaghe it was quite a natural transition up to 175lbs.

Jones Jr I would say was like Calzaghe he was a natural supermiddle, he struggled at middleweight and as he got older out grew the middleweight division. He was never a big light heavyweight often weighting around 185lbs round the time of the fight only 10lbs above the limit compared to Tarver who would be close to 190lbs.

So Hopkins was a natural middle through the most of his career and by the time of the Eastman fight had grown into a natural supermiddle, while Jones Jr and Calzaghe were both natural supermiddles who easily adapted to the light heavy division as they were pretty big super middles.

 

Calzaghe does get a hard time from fans who simply didn't know what was going on at the time.

He gets a lot of flak for staying in the UK for the vast majority of his career which quite frankly is the norm for many US based champions. What a lot of people don't know was he was meant to fight Syd Vanderpool on the undercard of De La Hoya/Trinidad way back in 99 but had to pull out at a couple of weeks before due to an injury so even way back then he was willing to travel.

His opposition was especially poor around 2004 and 2005 but his opposition was no worse than Hopkins middleweight reign. There simply was no super stars to face in his own division and the other champions avoided him like he had the plague.

Calzaghe really only ever ducked one fighter and that was Freeman Barr who was his mandatory for 18 months but quite frankly nobody wanted to see him face Barr. Calzaghe sometimes took easy defences like Pudwill but that was simply poor matchmaking on his promoters part.

 

Pudwill was a replacement - Think it was for Glen Johnson. Can't remember. It was for a far more respectable fighter anyway.

 

John David jackson was a faded fighter that looked more interesting in his part time modelling by the time he fought Nard imo.

Probably his best natural middleweight name, but not that important a contest when you look at where jackson was in his career.The Castro KO finished anything he had left imo.

 

Hopkins has an EGO. So does Roy. Be in the same room with either guy for an hour, and you'll know immediately why it didn't happen in 2002.

Other than that, he was trying to claw his way up boxing. Bernard Hopkins at no point was going to accept being somebody else's meal ticket. He wanted to go down as great as he thought and still thinks he is.

 

He was afraid of Henry Maske.

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