Why was Calzaghe's pitty pat style so effective?

Joe was faster, used more angles, had endless stamina and could be really unorthodox.

And frankly, Kova is shot to sh*t. He had no umph on his shots, no right hand, his money shot. I am old enough to remember a guy 5 years ago named Kovalev who was walking thru the division, an assassin cold-cocking everyone. This isn't close to the same guy. And it's not the opposition.

 

The word is surprising. I think Kovalev had the cuffs on.

The secret was his accuracy, volume, the way he would dart to another direction after landing, and the effect this had on the opponent being able to set himself in response to that. Joe would move more times to create one move. It gave too much for the other guy to read in time.

I can hardly imagine Canelo walking through Kovalevs punches the way he did to Kovalev. I think a deal was done. Kov had the cuffs on. The rehydration clause killed him, but a decision to chose not to physically man handle the smaller guy ..or ever try to use full force blows seals it for me.

 

Kovalev was handpicked because he was badly weathered and ripe to go .. in addition the man just had a brutal fight a few months ago with no time to let his 36 year old body even heal .. the KO was sudden and dramatic but this was not the Kovalev of 2012 - 2014 by a long shot .. the fight reminded me of Louis vs Marciano ..

 

Certainly Alvarez made Kovalev work harder than he wanted to, but Kovalev (clearly weight weakened due to the hydration clause) still wouldn’t press forward. It made no sense for him not to even try that. He was choosing a high energy, back foot, light handed boxing strategy rather than bully the smaller man. Why?

 

My thoughts exactly.

 

Well his first 20 fights or so on the way up Calzaghe was known as a bit of a banger.
I think he stopped all but one of his first 20 opponents or so.
Ultimately hand problems took over and he adapted a different style. I suspect however that amongst all those pitty pat punches some of them were simply having more effect than we sitting comfortably outside the ring realised.
You couldn’t just walk through him.

 

Calzaghe may have been a slapper, but he slapped pretty hard. Numerous accounts from opponents testify to that.

There was obviously a lot else going on that was difficult for opponents to deal with, but what often gets overlooked is that Calzaghe wasn't feather-fisted.

 

Yeah, he had a reputation as a puncher in his early days, at least up until the Thornberry and Starie fights.

 

Because it kept his hand picked competition busy trying to defend.

Oldsters Jones and Hopkins no longer had the reflexes of their youth to counter consistently.

 

Calzaghe had a blessing in having absurdly fast reaction and defensive nous. Very often he seemed to pick up a punch before it even started and dodge it. His punches were by no means crushing, but look at the RJJ fight to see what those "pitty pats" could do. They were hard enough to hurt, and enough of them would mangle a guy. I like zaggers because he's yet another example of a style that should not work ... that worked magnificently. I imagine Harry Greb as being a kind of a cross between Calzaghe and a guy with the footwork of Derevyanchenko.

 

He was just a totally natural talent of talents, so loose and flowing with his body movement and stepping off and instinctively timed and judged everything such as amount of shots per flurry and when to throw in a sneaky power shot in the middle of a flurry - watch carefully and he'd set himself for a hard shot after stunning them with lighter shots, then back to lighter shots! Early in his career he loaded up his first shot a lot, the big left, and hurt his hand badly which turned out to be a great blessing in disguise

 

He could do whatever he wanted really, from day dot apparently.

 

Calzaghe is a legitimately great fighter and never entered the ring as being spent or shot (or to an agreement on what he could do). He had great use of angles, his timing was good for a volume guy and so was his accuracy. If a rock chin Eubank, who went toe to toe later with Thompson endorses Calzaghe of having heavy hands I think I’d tend to believe it. He hurt Kessler a few times too when he needed to.