****y Calzaghe Eyes The Executioner-2002 Article

[Dirk Diggler UK]

yes if he put up real money and not some lowball **** that he knew no one would accept. this way he could say they are ducking him when they don't even know he exists.

$3m was the offer stipulated by Bernard Hopkins' own lawyer. That was his biggest purse which Hopkins did accept.

He called back 24 hrs later and asked for $6m to fight the guy he "didnt even know existed".

[Dirk Diggler UK]

When did it become known as duckin' or avoidin' a fighter if you don't want to fight him in his house? Joe didn't say I'll go to America or any other place......he said the Millenium Stadium aka Joe's house.

Lets get this straight........Joe hadn't beaten NOBODY of great significance at this time. He was JUST the WBO champ. While B-Hop had just unified the 160 division and was ALREADY the UNDISPUTED champ in his division. I'm not sayin' Joe wasn't the man in division(because he was)
I'm just sayin' he didn't accomplish enough at that time to have an UNDISPUTED champ come to his house and accept his terms.....
Joe said those things because he already knew he wouldn't get a TOP star to come over to the UK and he had no intensions on goin' to America, so he was just playin' politician in that article.......As a matter of fact, the ONLY reason he fought B-Hop in America was the HBO contract he signed......his 3rd fight on their network had to be in the U.S. And since he got so much love in Vegas, he feels more comfortable fighting across the Atlantic........but we'll see how much he likes it when he finds out how much more Roy is loved than B-Hop. How will Joe respond to NOT having the crowd in a BIG fight?

The fight negotiations in 2002 were for a fight in America. Obviously Joe preferred to fight in front of his own fans but was willing to go to the states and fight. See here:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/boxing/3030004.stm

"I want a big fight in the States and Hopkins is who I'm looking for," said Calzaghe

So that pretty much kills your whole premise.

[C.J.Mak]

$3m was the offer stipulated by Bernard Hopkins' own lawyer. That was his biggest purse which Hopkins did accept.

He called back 24 hrs later and asked for $6m to fight the guy he "didnt even know existed".

Exactly,Then after pricing himself out of a potentially hard fight with Calzaghe Hopkins went on to defend his titles for less than $3million against some guy named Morrade Hakkar.

[daggum]

Exactly,Then after pricing himself out of a potentially hard fight with Calzaghe Hopkins went on to defend his titles for less than $3million against some guy named Morrade Hakkar.

WRONG AGAIN! he was already scheduled to fight hakkar.

[boxasmash]

Hopkins ducked calzaghe, theres no other way of looking at it.

[C.J.Mak]

WRONG AGAIN! he was already scheduled to fight hakkar.

Wrong according to you,An obvious Calzaghe hater...

[hookoutofhell]

daggum youre irrational hate of joe is clouding your judgement.

regardless of what you think you cannot dispute the fact that joe has always looked for big fights. he has called out the likes of hopkins, RJJ, taver, johnson etc - yet everytime something came up. hopkins ducked joe plain and simple for me, he didn't have another good fighter lined up he didn't have alot of options he just ducked him, thats my opinion anyway.

the one fighter mentioned above who came closest to fighting joe was g.johnson, injury problems though prevented the fight from getting the go-ahead. this is one of the reasons why joe was avoided by alot of fighters - he would often delay fights or withdraw from them because of injury problems, thats not the opponents joe but neither is it joes.

another reason is of course that joe, is a euro champ and alot of american fighters dont really fancy taking on euro champs - especially when they're not a big draw like hatton - witter, kess, joe, froch. joe when he in his prime fell into the low risk/reward category.

alot of peple seem to say that joe jut waited for hopkins and co to get old and then beat them and cement his legacy. well you could sy that aabou anyone - hopkins was just an above average middleweight who beat up on smaller fighters out of their weight classes (winky, tito, DLH) whenever he came up against top fellas his own size hes lost more than hes won (tarver and pavli aside hes lost to calz, taylor x2 , and RJJ).

im not sayin jump on the joe bandwagon but acknowledge that hes a good fighter, give him his credit and in his prime he would have given the top US fighters a real good fight and a better fight than some of them did take on.
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Sex tube

[Dan...]

It is an interesting article, and its not like X hasn't always priced himself out of some big fights. He has priced himself out of a Roy rematch for the better part of a decade.

To the threadstarter - I see what you are saying. I agree that the ducking criticism that has been levelled at Joe on these boards is over the top and for the most part incorrect. If he was ducking fighters he would never have fought Kessler. Prior to that unification fight Kessler was looking like an unstoppable beast, yet a seemingly ageing Calzaghe was prepared to fight him - not the actions of a ducker.

[Dirk Diggler UK]

WRONG AGAIN! he was already scheduled to fight hakkar.

Wrong again. Showtime met with Hopkins' people to arrange 3 fights. One was Hakkar who was his mandatory, the next was a fight with Harry Simon who I believe was the WBO Middleweight Champ at the time and finally the big fight with Calzaghe.

Hopkins ended up only fighting Hakkar for 3 times less what he would've got fighting Calzaghe.

[IMDAZED]

"I'll destroy him," said Calzaghe. "He's 37 now and his last good win was against Felix Trinidad 14 months ago.

Some things never change.