Dawson has also been fighting 40 year olds in Tarver and Johnson and the latter 40 year old got robbed. Also these days the 40 year old fighters are kicking the 20 something's butts so it is no longer an insult to say someone is fighting old guys. Nearly 40 Vitali and 44 year old Bernard Hopkins kicked the young guns butts. I'd be embarassed to be a young guy nowadays. Soft little mommaboys.
Joe can fight his ass off, he is amazing. He adjusts better than any fighter I have seen in recent memory.
I went with him being a brilliant fighter, but it is surely a mixture of both. I would have both prime Hopkins and prime Jones beating Calzaghe in good fights, prime for prime.
I don't understand the second option: "because he hasn't fought ENOUGH quality opponents". It assumes that if he had fought MORE quality opponents he'd have lost. I disagree. It's not a question of quantity, but of quality! He hasn't faced a good enough fighter, at the time he faced him, to beat him....yeah...and that has a lot to do with how good he is. If he had faced a prime Jones, for example, he'd have most likely lost. He could have faced the likes of Mitchell and Reid - better than average Calzaghe opponents, time after time, and he'd still have beaten them...
You face enough top quality opponents and eventually you will lose to someone that you are better than for one reason or another. There are many example. Its the same reason Arsenal can lose to Everton every once in a blue moon.
If you keep fighting them until you're well past your best, yeah! But if he had fought this level of opponents for 10 years, not necessarily, and in this case, I'd say NO! Williams...well...he's hardly a Joe Calzaghe...and I'm a fan too! There are few fighters who can remain unbeaten fighting even good, nevermind very good opposition for as long as Calzaghe has...he is an exception to a certain degree. His career was also very well managed....
How can you be undefeated because of competition? That doesn't make sense. If you aren't an extremely good fighter you will lose at some point, and even if you are you can still lose at world level.
if joe fights long enough he will eventually lose, but there is NO ONE from 160 through 175 that I see beating him
I'll be honest here. Before Calzaghe was signed to fight Lacy, I had never seen Lacy fight. At the time I was a big boxing fan too. Lacy may have been super-hyped in America, but as a Canadian he was not someone I was keeping an eye on as being an elite fighter.. So that means that the only fighters I had seen fight before Calzaghe fought them are Manfredo, Kessler, Hopkins, and Jones. Manfredo was ****. Kessler was a very good fighter. I thought Kessler would beat Calzaghe, and give Calzaghe alot of credit for that win. Hopkins was a bad style matchup for Calzaghe that I thought Calzaghe would win in a close UD because Hopkins was shot. It went exactly as I predicted. Roy Jones is a fighter that I've thought was shot since his first struggle against Tarver. So in my eyes (the eyes of someone who has often said Calzaghe is a great fighter and a lock for HOF), Calzaghe's competition has not been very good. I commend him for fighting big fights late in his career, but the actual substance is not there. I don't think Calzaghe is as good as people are making him out to be following his win over RJJ. And I've always been a Calzaghe defender.