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Wow, way....WAYYYYYYYY too much praise for Joshua Clottey in this thread. The last 6-10 months I have read nothing but, "Josh Clottey is so underrated...Clottey is ridiculously underrated....nobody wants a piece of Clottey" etc. Some of this is mind blowing.
Clottey is a toug, skilled fighter with a few nice things going for him. He's strong, he has good hand speed, he's tough, and he has a pretty good left hand. The guy can handle himself in the ring...obviously.
However, Clottey is not the second coming of Ike Quartey. That's an insult to Ike, who was absolutely dominating at times early in his career. When Ike was beating Cris Espana into submission and was blasting out Vince Phillips in the mid-90's he looked downright fearsome. He has one of the very best jabs in the history of the sport and he gave us some legitimately great performances. They are both Ghanaian....that's where the comparison ends.
I suspect that Clottey is a bit of a front runner. He starts well, but he has fallen apart in his biggest fights....whether it's by a mental mistake or an injury. It was even the case with Gutierrez. Clottey started well with the quick left hooks in singles and doubles, upstairs and down, but he started to fade a bit in the middle of the fight. The first four or five rounds were great to watch, but Clottey started to fall apart in the face of Gutierrez' strength and hard bodyshots. That's when we saw the holding and headbutts come out.
I don't want to completely drag this thread down with negative stuff about Clottey. He's a good fighter, but he'd be in over his head against Cotto, Mayweather and maybe even guys like Quintana and Williams. He gained a ton of respect for 4(?) excellent rounds against a good fighter in Margarito, but he hasn't shown me anything besides that to say he's severely under rated.
Clottey is a toug, skilled fighter with a few nice things going for him. He's strong, he has good hand speed, he's tough, and he has a pretty good left hand. The guy can handle himself in the ring...obviously.
However, Clottey is not the second coming of Ike Quartey. That's an insult to Ike, who was absolutely dominating at times early in his career. When Ike was beating Cris Espana into submission and was blasting out Vince Phillips in the mid-90's he looked downright fearsome. He has one of the very best jabs in the history of the sport and he gave us some legitimately great performances. They are both Ghanaian....that's where the comparison ends.
I suspect that Clottey is a bit of a front runner. He starts well, but he has fallen apart in his biggest fights....whether it's by a mental mistake or an injury. It was even the case with Gutierrez. Clottey started well with the quick left hooks in singles and doubles, upstairs and down, but he started to fade a bit in the middle of the fight. The first four or five rounds were great to watch, but Clottey started to fall apart in the face of Gutierrez' strength and hard bodyshots. That's when we saw the holding and headbutts come out.
I don't want to completely drag this thread down with negative stuff about Clottey. He's a good fighter, but he'd be in over his head against Cotto, Mayweather and maybe even guys like Quintana and Williams. He gained a ton of respect for 4(?) excellent rounds against a good fighter in Margarito, but he hasn't shown me anything besides that to say he's severely under rated.
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