Quote Originally Posted by TitoFan View Post
Quote Originally Posted by Gandalf View Post
I don't see how Calzaghe wasn't fan friendly. He sold out stadiums and finished out his career throwing a 1000 punches a round on HBO. How more exciting can a fighter be?

If we are talking fan friendly, Calzaghe is no Bernard Hopkins.

Miles... he sold out stadiums. No doubt about that. Any British fighter with an undefeated record, not a very common occurence for any fighter nowadays, will do that. And hand it to the British... they certainly know how to back their fighters.

But I'd rather see someone throw 100 real punches in a round, than someone throwing 1000 slaps. It's that simple. Workrate is one thing... effective punching is another. And no... Calzaghe is no Bernard Hopkins. I wouldn't exactly call Bernard fan friendly either... but for even more reasons. Not only was Bernard's mauling and grappling style painful to watch... but Hopkins himself didn't care what the fans thought or didn't think of him. Calzaghe was probably a pretty good bloke... but the "flurries" that brought the fans out of their seats were sometimes hilarious. Few real punches thrown with bad intentions. Let's just say slow-motion replays were not Calzaghe's best friends.
You really seem to have a personal dislike of Calzaghe and his style.

I maintain that he was fan friendly. He threw punches in bunches and a lot of them. People like fighters that throw combinations and Calzaghe was popular because of it. Hopkins was not fan friendly. Ward is not fan friendly. But Calzaghe was. Like Paul Williams he would unleash a lot of punches and not stop. What isn't fun to watch about that? Sure in doing so he could be a little sloppy, but so what? Is that anything to really get upset about and argue for 13 pages?

Calzaghe was a quality fighter with a decent resume. Yes, there are holes but as has been pointed out Hopkins wasn't any better prior to going up and calling out smaller men as was his thing before. Calzaghe could have called out LMW's but what would that really mean. Just a man beating on smaller men. Winky Wright at LHW for instance? Nuts. Ooh but it's a name!