Quote Originally Posted by Trainer Monkey View Post
Quote Originally Posted by gudnite vienna View Post
hey i agree with you.. but he was prepared to fight both of them years back but wanted the fight in wales...

He really did waste the best years of his career..
A suprisingly candid non homerish way of looking at it,sorry Vienna you can be a bit of a homer for Joe
The whole thing seriously screws with whatever legacy he was hoping to build,a highly questionable decision against an old Hopkins,beating and getting knocked down by a seriously spent Jones,and Lacy and Manfredo just got sparked.
He should have gone for it early,then we could have a real debate about his place in boxing history,but right now,Im looking at a gift decision,a has been,and two never really weres
That is wrong. He dominated RJJ. You can't qualify that win at all. He definitively beat RJJ evidenced by the fact that Calzaghe didn't really fight the last two rounds. RJJ was badly cut, and Calzaghe completely avoided punching the cut. The Hopkins fight was close, but look how good Hopkins still is: in his next performance Hopkins completely shut down the middleweight champion of the world. Yet in the Calzaghe fight, he was content to run and clinch. Hopkins, the mastermind, fought a bad fight against Calzaghe. It wasn't by accident. Calzaghe took him out of his element. Moreover, that fact that Calzaghe went down twice and won both fights is further testament to his greatness, not a knock on it.

His legacy should and will be discounted by the lack of champion caliber fighters he fought in his prime, but it is still a very, very good legacy. Anyone who has Bhop and RJJ on his list of wins, regardless of when the fight took place, has a good legacy. Add Kessler, Lacy, and Bika to the list, and you have a very good legacy. Not the best, but a very good one.