Quote Originally Posted by Pantera
Quote Originally Posted by WWatt
The Eubank fight was very close, and very tough.

The Thornberry, Reid and Starie performances were very poor by his standards but admittedly it was due to a hand injury, that injury to his left hand though eventually healed in time to stop Sheika, Woodhall and Veit where he finally found some form again.
You say these 4 fights were close and poor performances. I didn't see them, but from the looks of the scores he couldn't have done too bad. In 3 of these fights he took almost all the rounds from at least 2 of the judges. If you call that a poor performance than he must be pretty damn good.
Thornberry, Reid and Starie were very poor performances by his high standards, he was booed out of the building. Those guys weren't supposed to last three or four rounds, but it was Joe's stubborness to want to continue to take fights while carrying a hand injury.

Eubank was a very close fight, no round was a blow-out even though Joe's sheer workrate and determination was winning the rounds. Take away the three knockdowns (one of which the first punch of the fight, the other two more like slips in later rounds) and the way the scoring was it would of made it pretty close, I in round 10 when Eubank's glove touched the canvas he was winning that round but judges gave it 10-8 to Calzaghe when it really should of been 10-9 for Eubank.

Joe took an absolute hammering from Eubank!