Tweet
MP: Who do you consider the greatest super middleweight of all time? How do you rank and rate yourself?
CE: I wouldn't really know. I don't think super middleweights has been around that long and I haven't followed it since Calzaghe beat me, so I can't really say.
Making the case for me: 14 successful world championship defences in three calender years. Some say I deserved to nick it at Old Trafford against Nigel; I beat Rocchigiani in Germany...So, you know, I'm probably this greatest super middleweight. That would be me.
As far as the best, well, the idea of boxing is you get them at a distance with the jab so you can place the right hand and coordinate other punches and combinations. Roy Jones could replace the jab with the left hook at world championship level and win each round. So you could say Jones is on another planet and doesn't count! It shows how gifted Jones was that he was the most relaxed puncher yet knocked guys head over heels at his natural weight.
Making the case for me being the best ever depends on how much stock
you put into the Watson and Wharton fights. Michael Watson, in our second fight, was hit by punches that would have literally knocked over a giraffe! And many dozens of times. That was just in the first three or four rounds. He came out at the first bell at the pace of a lightweight, and coming out for Round 11 he was still the pace of a lightweight! This man was super middleweight. I fought this man just a few months before and he was said to be in the best shape of his career then somehow his hands felt three times heavier three months later.
I'm not exaggerating when I say Michael Watson was unbeatable that night. He was basically unbeatable. Nobody could have done anything with him. He wasn't just standing in front of me either he was slipping and switching all night. He was moving forward faster than I was moving backward, I was one of the best boxers in the world, one of the best fighters in the world and one of the best punchers in the world and had been for three or four years. In the sixth round I gave up because I knew I couldn't win and my integrity wouldn't allow me to just roll over.
In the eleventh round, I was knocked down for the first time in my career. I got up immediately, walked in and threw a near-perfect 4-ton right uppercut with a near-perfect arc that laced through Watson's near-perfect guard and it effectively won me the fight.
Whatever stock you put into that is up to you. In regards to the Henry Wharton fight, the performance really couldn't be much better. That was as good as it gets!
Wharton was a bull in a china shop, but the jab couldn't be faster or more accurate and the combinations couldn't be more perfect.
When Wharton fought Benn, he didn't throw a punch until the last second of the fifth round. He didn't freeze against me, and after such a prolonged beating, of which I gave Henry Wharton, a man can never be the same. And it was a prolonged beating of poetic efficiency.
James Toney, for a few fights, was also exceptionally good, and there are southpaws like Nunn and Calzaghe.
I knocked down Sugar Boy Malinga for the first time in his career, I knocked down Steve Collins for the first time in his career, albeit average fighters. With the finishing instinct I had pre-Watson they would not have seen the end of those rounds.
Who knows? It's up to you.
MP: Chris Eubank vs James Toney?
CE: I think Toney probably had the style to beat me over 12 rounds at 168 pounds. I see him outworking me with his body-to-head and head-to-body combinations, and he wouldn't need to keep coming forward all the time. But I would hit him exceptionally hard with every punch - every jab, every body shot; I'd turn body shots into uppercuts, and they'd have to carry me out. No posing, just poker face. I'd have looked for the combinations in the final two or three rounds if it went that far. But that would be a hard, hard fight if Toney prepared correctly and fought me correctly.
But then again, this is fantasy. Who knows?
MP: Nigel Benn vs Roy Jones?
CE: There is this question mark you say over this punch resistance of Roy Jones, and if that question mark your saying is correct or justified, then I will say that Nigel Benn at his most ferocious will hit you - that's a foregone conclusion. If you can sustain a punch, you have a chance of beating Benn at his most ferocious. If you can't, you don't. That is unless he has the one-off attitude he had when he fought Michael Watson – mindlessly hitting arms, gloves and elbows until he was ready to drop. You have to remember, even on the way down from being knocked out himself Benn managed to render men unconsciousness, such was his natural power.
MP: Roy Jones vs Joe Calzaghe?
CE: Calzaghe is square, he can be hit and he can be hurt. (But) Calzaghe is a very, very good fighter, a flash-handed southpaw who can **** a bit when he loads up, shall we say. He likes to go to war, that's his business. I know how devastatingly powerful Roy Jones punched at 168 pounds just by seeing what he did to Malinga and Thornton. You'd go with Jones, of course. I don't know if it would even take too many rounds.
Comment