He gets a lot of hate from certain quarters because he slapped there fighters silly...

Take the likes of robin reid or ritchie woodhall (not even calzaghes best wins), reid was one seriously under-rated fighter in his day. He only got knocked down and out by Jeff Lacy when he was totally shot, Lacy would never have put Reid down in his prime and in fact I reckon Reid would have done him. Reid was rated in the ring mag top 10 for 7 years.

If Reid was not deducted and faced such a poor bias ref he would have beaten GIF decision maestro Sven 'the most beaten unbeaten fighter ever!' otke! a disgraceful/notoriously bad decision! Had justice been done, Reid would have been a two time, three belt winning world champion..Reid was honestly just outside the 10 ten best 168 fighters ever on his best day.

This is also highligted by reids beating of henry wharton, henry pushed prime benn and eubank all the way in 2 close fights (in fact he had benn out on his feet at one point!) Wharton was one of those rare examples of a very talented fighter that just missed out on world honours (a herol 'bomber' graham type fighter!).

Woodhall won bronze behind roy jones at the olympics (they don't hand those out in sweet shops) both men were certainly better than the eventual winner who won gold, thats for sure! Ritchie beat thulani maliunga as a pro, malinga holds a win over nigel been and dropped a very close SD to chris eubank! Woodhall also beat the slightly overlooked silvio branco who beat glenn johnson, stipe drews, thomas tate and manny siaca.

Both men would easily be top 10 in this era, both were fine athletetes and very good fighters, take them out of calzaghe's era and put them in this or any era in fact and they would be competitive! I'd certainbly take reid to eek out a decision over i.e sakio bika, and he'd certainly UD glenn johnson who never did anything at 168lbs, and woodhall would be favourite over the likes of allen green for sure and he'd give abraham and froch a fight!

It's sheer hate or ignorance that fuels the calzaghe bashing, he has some solid wins....So to suggest calzaghe and his opponents were no good is simply to perpetuate a haters myth! Woodhall and reid hold victories over fighters who either beat or pushed benn/eubank all the way in close (even debateable) fights! That is very telling...not to mention a fairly green calzaghe outboxing and dominating a 30 yr old eubank who had recently lost a dodgy decision in ireland for a world title and went onto participate in a FOTY for another title against thompson in which many thought eubank won or at least deserved a draw (hence the quick rematch!)