-
-
Castillo - Mayweather II
and
Hatton - Castillo II
...you guys be the judge.
How past prime was Castillo????Objective opinions please. No hatton ball lickers and no Floyd ball lickers.
I have given up on discussing this matchup. Mayweather fans will give no credit to Hatton. That said, fight night will say all that needs saying. I just hope that the losing side has the balls to take it like men!Comment
-
Hatton did what he was supposed to do and more, way more then expected, he gets credit from me, but at the same time i can't ignore the fact that Castillos mind was not in that fight.
This was Reyes fight to win, he could have beaten Castillo that night if it was not for him being to gun shy.Comment
-
Hatton by KO. The Castillo fight is a common denominator.
Comment
-
I have given Hatton plenty of credit. I said that he did exactly what he should have against Castillo. But be fair, Castillo was not Castillo against Hatton.
He couldn't even hold himself up when Hatton clinched, he fell over a couple of times just form the weight of a clinch.
His balance was awful, and he just never got in "the groove" as boxing fans call it.Comment
-
The Battle of Trafalgar saw the British decisively defeat a combined French and Spanish fleet on 21 October 1805 in the most significant naval battle of the Napoleonic Wars. A Royal Navy fleet of 27 ships of the line destroyed an allied French and Spanish fleet of 33 ships of the line west of Cape Trafalgar in south-west Spain. The French and Spanish lost 22 ships, while the British lost none. The British commander Admiral Lord Nelson died late in the battle, by which time he had ensured his place as Britain's greatest naval hero.
It was part of the War of the Third Coalition, and a pivotal naval battle of the 19th century. The British victory spectacularly confirmed the naval supremacy that Britain had established during the 18th century. However, by the time it was fought, Napoleon had abandoned his plans to invade southern England and instead was defeating Britain's allies in Germany.
The 200th anniversary of the battle was marked by Trafalgar 200 celebrations in the United Kingdom.
Origins
In 1805, the First French Empire, under Napoleon, was the dominant military land power on the European continent, while the British Royal Navy controlled the seas. During the course of the war, the British imposed a naval blockade on France, which affected trade and kept the French from fully mobilising their own naval resources. Despite several successful evasions of the blockade by the French navy, it failed to inflict a major defeat upon the British. The British were able to attack French interests at home and abroad with relative ease.
When the Third Coalition declared war on France after the short-lived Peace of Amiens, Napoleon Bonaparte was determined to invade Britain. To do so, he had to ensure that the Royal Navy would be unable to disrupt the invasion flotilla, which would require control of the English Channel.
The main French fleets were at Brest in Brittany and at Toulon on the Mediterranean coast. Other ports on the French Atlantic coast contained smaller squadrons. France and Spain were allied, so the Spanish fleet based in Cádiz and Ferrol was also available.
The British possessed an experienced and well-trained corps of naval officers. By contrast, most of the best officers in the French navy had either been executed or dismissed from the service during the early part of the French Revolution. As a result, Vice-Admiral Pierre-Charles Villeneuve was the most competent senior officer available to command Napoleon's Mediterranean fleet. However, Villeneuve had shown a distinct lack of enthusiasm to face Nelson and the Royal Navy after the defeat at the Battle of the Nile.
Napoleon's naval plan in 1805 was for the French and Spanish fleets in the Mediterranean and Cádiz to break through the blockade and join forces in the West Indies. They would then return, assist the fleet in Brest to emerge from the blockade, and together clear the English Channel of Royal Navy ships, ensuring a safe passage for the invasion barges. The plan seemed good on paper but as the war wore on, Napoleon's unfamiliarity with naval strategy and ill-advised naval commanders continued to haunt the French.
[edit] West Indies
Early in 1805, Admiral Lord Nelson commanded the British fleet blockading Toulon. Unlike William Cornwallis, who maintained a tight blockade of Brest with the Channel Fleet, Nelson adopted a loose blockade in hopes of luring the French out for a major battle. However, Villeneuve's fleet successfully evaded Nelson's when his forces were blown off station by storms. While Nelson was searching the Mediterranean for him, Villeneuve passed through the Straits of Gibraltar, rendezvoused with the Spanish fleet, and sailed as planned to the West Indies. Once Nelson realized that the French had crossed the Atlantic Ocean, he set off in pursuit.[1]
[edit] Cádiz
Villeneuve returned from the West Indies to Europe, intending to break the blockade at Brest, but after two of his Spanish ships were captured during the Battle of Cape Finisterre by a squadron under Vice-Admiral Sir Robert Calder, Villeneuve abandoned this plan and sailed back to Ferrol.
Napoleon's invasion plans for England depended entirely on having a sufficiently large number of ships of the line before Boulogne, France. This would require Villeneuve's force of 32 ships to join Vice-Admiral Ganteaume's force of 21 ships at Brest, along with a squadron of 5 ships under Captain Allemand, which would have given him a combined force of 58 ships of the line.
When Villeneuve set sail from Ferrol on 10 August, he was under strict orders from Napoleon to sail northward toward Brest. Instead, he worried that the British were observing his maneuvers, so on 11 August he sailed southward towards Cádiz on the southwestern coast of Spain. With no sign of Villeneuve's fleet by 26 August, the three French army corps invasion force near Boulogne broke camp and marched to Germany, where it would become fully engaged.
The same month, Nelson returned home to England after two years of duty at sea, for some well-earned rest. He remained ashore for 25 busy days, and was warmly received by his countrymen, who were understandably nervous about a possible French invasion. Word reached England on 2 September about the combined French and Spanish fleet in the harbour of Cádiz. Nelson had to wait until 15 September before his ship HMS Victory was ready to sail.
On 15 August, Cornwallis made the fateful decision to detach 20 ships of the line from the fleet guarding the Channel and to have them sail southward to engage the enemy forces in Spain. This left the Channel somewhat denuded of ships, with only eleven ships of the line present. However, this detached force formed the nucleus of the British fleet that would fight at Trafalgar. Initially this fleet was placed under the command of Vice-Admiral Calder, reaching Cádiz on 15 September. Nelson joined the fleet on 29 September to take command.
The British fleet used frigates to keep a constant watch on the harbour, while the main force remained out of sight 50 miles (80 km) west of the shore. Nelson's hope was to lure the combined Franco-Spanish force out and engage them in a "pell-mell battle". The force watching the harbour was led by Captain Blackwood, commanding HMS Euryalus. He was brought up to a strength of seven ships (five frigates and two schooners) on 8 October.
[edit] Supply situation
At this point, Nelson's fleet badly needed provisioning. On 2 October, five ships of the line, Queen, Canopus, Spencer, Zealous, Tigre, and the frigate Endymion were dispatched to Gibraltar under Rear-Admiral Louis for supplies. These ships were later diverted for convoy duty in the Mediterranean, whereas Nelson had expected them to return. Other British ships continued to arrive, and by 15 October the fleet was up to full strength for the battle. Although it was a significant loss; once the first-rate Royal Sovereign had arrived, Nelson allowed Calder to sail for home in his flagship, the 98-gun Prince of Wales. Calder's apparent lack of aggression during the engagement off Cape Finisterre on July 22, had caused the Admiralty to recall him for a court martial and he would normally have been sent back to Britain in a smaller ship.
Meanwhile, Villeneuve's fleet in Cádiz was also suffering from a serious supply shortage that could not be readily rectified by the cash-strapped French. The blockades maintained by the British fleet had made it difficult for the allies to obtain stores and their ships were ill fitted. Villeneuve's ships were also more than two thousand men short of the force needed to sail. These were not the only problems faced by the Franco-Spanish fleet. The main French ships of the line had been kept in harbour for years by the British blockades with only brief sorties. The hasty voyage across the Atlantic and back used up vital supplies and was no match for the British fleet's years of experience at sea and training. The French crews contained few experienced sailors, and as most of the crew had to be taught the elements of seamanship on the few occasions when they got to sea, gunnery was neglected. Villeneuve's supply situation began to improve in October, but news of Nelson's arrival made Villeneuve reluctant to leave port. Indeed, his captains had held a vote on the matter and decided to stay in the harbour.
On the 16th of September, Napoleon gave orders for the French and Spanish ships at Cadiz to put to sea at the first favorable opportunity, join with seven Spanish ships of the line then at Cartagena, go to Naples, and land the soldiers they carried to reinforce his troops there, and fight with decisive action if they met a British fleet of inferior numbers.Comment
-
I love how Hattons opponents were 'past their prime' without actually losing anything previously..
Tszyu and Castillo..Comment
Tweet
Comment