Why wasn't Calzaghe given more credit for his wins against RJJ and Hopkins?

Calslappy was less overrated than AJ , but still overrated as most limey fighters

 

It just goes show to how disrespectful the US media and boxing public was towards Calzaghe. With many boxers, pundits, fans etc. picking Jones to win. Pretty sure the odds were close as well. Calzaghe wasn't fully appreciated on this side of the Atlantic until well after his career had ended and even then he's a controversial figure.

 

Tramell,

Nigel Benn did want him. That's correct. But the fight was problematic to make due to a deep distrust and dislike between Roy's handlers and Don King.

The fight with Dariusz should definitely have happened. But I don't blame Roy for not going to Germany. Germany was notorious for horrible decisions, he'd seen Dariusz cheat in his first fight with Rocchigianni to get him disqualified, and like you've mentioned, he was scarred from the Olympics in Seoul.

However, for what it's worth, I do believe that Roy would have fought him in the U.S. as HBO worked hard to try and make it happen. But Dariusz obviously had no intentions of leaving Germany, where he was content to repeatedly defend his lightly regarded WBO belt, in the same vain as what Joe did.

Over the last decade or so, his circumstances changed dramatically.

It's a crying shame that he missed out on potentially good fights. But you have to objectively look at how many of them were actually viable. Aside from boxing politics, guys like Dariusz, Liles, Hopkins and Joe wanted nothing to do with him when he was at his best. Other than fighting those guys, the best that he could do was to fight the other top guys of his weight class. And that is what he did for the majority of his reign. Of course there were the odd admissions like Rochigianni and Nunn etc, but he still beat guys of equal ability, such as: Griffin, Hill, Reggie Johnson, Harding and Tarver etc. Yes, his resume could have been better. But so could the resumes of most fighters. You can look at the resumes of all of the guys I've just listed in this reply and you can see who they didn't fight as well. Overall, Roy has a very good resume. And it's better than the majority of the fighters who fought in and around his weight classes who were of the same era.

 

Y'all must've forgot - he was coming off that "big win" over Félix Trinidad.

 

I think Hopkins picking Jones was just sour grapes + a bit of nationalism and personal pride. After all Jones had bested him earlier on in his career and he felt hard done by against Calzaghe himself. Gun to head I'm sure he'd have gone with Super Joe.

 

Joe was not chasing an earlier fight with Roy.

Behave.

He was more than happy to defend a lightly regarded WBO belt for 10 years, on another continent, at another weight class.

Showtime wanted him to move up to LHW and fight in the U.S. yet he wasn't interested. And that was fine. But that's why he missed out on earlier bigger fight opportunities. It wasn't because he was avoided. It was because he was insignificant. He was relatively unknown outside of Europe right up until he fought Lacy in 2006. He was still happy to be fighting the Mario Veit's of the world even in his 30's.

Don't be fooled.

 

Yep. It was Bernard picking the lesser of two evils, in his mind.

Remember, the dude's a wee tad bigoted towards whitey (except when his gap-toothed hypocritical ass is shucking & jiving for "The Man" to push his business interests)

 

Because Hopkins was old and Jones was shot. That's it.

Hopkins was still a very good and dangerous fighter and one of the world's best but he was over 40 and that's enough for some to write him off and downplay anyone who beat him.

Roy Jones Jr on the other hand was a shadow of the boxer he'd once been and it had been over 4 years since he'd last been in the World Title picture - when Calzaghe fought him he was just a big recognizable name that could draw money, he wasn't a great fighter anymore.

Calzaghe was past his best too but he'd come late to superstardom so it was less obvious to his newer audience in America.

 

Were they being disrespectful, or was it just a lack of knowledge on their part?

How many U.S. fans actually saw the Kessler fight and deemed it as a huge fight?

How highly was Bernard rated at the time?

It sounds silly now, but I think that even in 2008, Joe was still a bit of an unknown quantity stateside. And when things like that are apparent, people will choose the more poular fighter, especially if they have an emotional attachment to them, either by knowing them personally, or being from the same era etc.

I saw a lot of those predictions, and I think some of them were picks based on nostalgia. Because anybody who really knew Joe knew that his engine was too much for Roy at that stage.

 

Reid was offered an immediate rematch but he turned it down because he thought he deserved more money: https://www.chroniclelive.co.uk/sport/other-sport/boxing/robin-reid-still-convinced-beat-10007036

...So why, given the great British showdown, wasn’t there an automatic return?


“Good question,” smiled Robin. “It ought to have been like George Groves v Carl Froch shouldn’t it? You know, the underdog who almost won getting his just desserts.


“However, it became all about cash.


“Everyone thought I got paid an absolute fortune against Calzaghe, bearing in mind I had been the WBC holder. I really believed I would receive about £100k. It wasn’t as if I was going into that fight as unknown.


“I made three successful defences of my WBC title but I only got paid £75,000 and with all the take-offs for my manager, training camp etc I ended up with £20,000.


“I thought bearing in mind how close the first fight was I would get paid a decent amount for a return, especially when so many people thought I won the first one. We genuinely didn’t like each other and the public love those fights don’t they?


“I was told I would get paid what I was worth, I was told it would be an offer I couldn’t refuse, but it all dragged on for about three to four months. Frank eventually took me out for a big meal at the Savoy Hotel and told me the offer was 90k – that was only 15k more than the first time around. I was flabbergasted.


“All I wanted was to be paid what I was worth. To be honest I thought I was going to be offered £150,000 and I was offered 90k. That’s why the second fight never happened. Shortly afterwards I signed with Jess Harding.”​

You might think he had the right of it and he should have been given a bigger offer but the fact of the matter is that the offer of an immediate rematch was made.

 

I'm struggling to remember, but nobody actually thought Jones' victory over Trinidad was particularly creditable, right? If so, if people had been defrauded into thinking it was, that would explain Jones being given a good chance against (I'm not sure about favored over) Calzaghe, and why Calzaghe might've received a little more credit for it, vacuuming up some of that shine Roy got for beating Tito vicariously.

It had been three years since Winky schooled Tito. He was encased in three years' worth of rust, had been utterly schooled after being destroyed by Hopkins and eking out a shaky victory over Mayorga, going 3-2 in his middleweight campaign - and then jumped all the way up to light heavyweight. There can't have been anyone giving Tito a serious chance vs. Roy, unless they were banking on Roy being shot to bits and Tito's power carrying up - but I remember having mentioned the match-up to a then co-worker of mine, knowing he was a casual fan of the sport, asking if he planned on watching it, and his eyes bulged wide. "Trinidad? Oh no...ya boy Trinidad is done. He been done. Roy gonna ice his ass, IDGAF what happened with Tarver, man, little ass Trinidad ain't no Tarver.."

Granted, he went the distance, so Tito did a commendable job held up against the standard of my co-worker's expectations, but needless to say he was a shot-to-bits fighter taking a big leap in weight to fight a slightly less shot but more importantly much larger and more active (not to mention, greater to begin with) fighter.

So while it helped Roy at the box office to dominate Tito, if you KSAB, then or now, you can't actually rate it as something meaningful.

 

How could Calslappy have beaten Hopkins he didn't throw 20 legitimate scoring punches all fight long

 

That was partly Calzaghe's own fault though.

He'd spent too long just defending against whoever the WBO put in front him and to his detractors this made him look like over-protected weak paper champion who avoided any real challenge, while at the same time many of Calzaghe's supporters felt he wasted his prime years, dwindled in ability and was there for the taking.

Even people who picked Calzaghe to win though Lacy would make a fight of it. The utter domination of that fight was a complete surprise to everyone.

 

No knowledgeable fan rates that win.

Most people either forget or don't realise that Tito couldn't even make the agreed upon C-W of 170 pounds.