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THE DOWNFALL OF JEFF "LEFT HOOK" LACY
It's probably the saddest news in recent times what we heard today but I could have predicted it 2 1/2 years ago. Gary Shaw had signed the new Mike Tyson and was matching him well against former title challengers until he matched him against the "old and overrated champion" in Joe Calzaghe. Gary Shaw must regret that decision to this day, he and Team Lacy totally wrote off Calzaghe's chances of winning that fight due to Calzaghe failing to KO Ashira (broken hand) and being Knocked down by Salem (during messy divorce). Lacy trained for a fight against an ageing champion and not a P4P top 10, this was his downfall. If Lacy had been given a year or two and knew how good Calzaghe was he could well have won, if not made it a lot closer than it was.
Before the Calzaghe fight there was numerous polls on how good Jeff Lacy was and the general conception was he could clean out SMW, LHW and EVEN Cruiserweight. That's how highly regarded he was - The P4P champion of the time Bernard Hopkins was even said to be ducking him, Taylor was to have no chance whatsoever in beating Lacy and many people claimed he would be BIGGER than Roy Jones.
The injury Lacy suffered on his left shoulder certainly didn't help him by no means but the damage was done by Joe Calzaghe, forget Mikkel Kessler, Chris Eubank and Bernard Hopkins - Lacy is the best fighter (or could have been) on Calzaghe's resume. It's all very easy to argue against it now because of his string of recent narrow victories but you only have to watch a tape of Jeff Lacy from 2004 to 2006 (before Joe) to notice that. Jeff Lacy is a confidence fighter and when you take a beating, as he did against Calzaghe he will never recover which ultimately he didn't as shown by his retirement today.
It's probably the saddest news in recent times what we heard today but I could have predicted it 2 1/2 years ago. Gary Shaw had signed the new Mike Tyson and was matching him well against former title challengers until he matched him against the "old and overrated champion" in Joe Calzaghe. Gary Shaw must regret that decision to this day, he and Team Lacy totally wrote off Calzaghe's chances of winning that fight due to Calzaghe failing to KO Ashira (broken hand) and being Knocked down by Salem (during messy divorce). Lacy trained for a fight against an ageing champion and not a P4P top 10, this was his downfall. If Lacy had been given a year or two and knew how good Calzaghe was he could well have won, if not made it a lot closer than it was.
Before the Calzaghe fight there was numerous polls on how good Jeff Lacy was and the general conception was he could clean out SMW, LHW and EVEN Cruiserweight. That's how highly regarded he was - The P4P champion of the time Bernard Hopkins was even said to be ducking him, Taylor was to have no chance whatsoever in beating Lacy and many people claimed he would be BIGGER than Roy Jones.
The injury Lacy suffered on his left shoulder certainly didn't help him by no means but the damage was done by Joe Calzaghe, forget Mikkel Kessler, Chris Eubank and Bernard Hopkins - Lacy is the best fighter (or could have been) on Calzaghe's resume. It's all very easy to argue against it now because of his string of recent narrow victories but you only have to watch a tape of Jeff Lacy from 2004 to 2006 (before Joe) to notice that. Jeff Lacy is a confidence fighter and when you take a beating, as he did against Calzaghe he will never recover which ultimately he didn't as shown by his retirement today.
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