Comments Thread For: Froch on 'Bitter' Calzaghe: My Stats Smash His To Bits!

[!! Shawn]

comments like this clearly show your lack of knowledge . Calzaghe did not have one punch knockout power, he may have ***** slapped Carl about the ring for 12rnds, but knockout the hardest chin in boxing??

It would have been a war IMO, with Joe edging it if he could keep control in the later rounds

Why do people say his chin is granite that like its the truth? Carl has been down and badly hurt on more than one occasion.

[!! Shawn]

Yes, from a statistical standpoint, Joe has the better resume.

I'm not quite sure why Carl has mentioned stats. He'd have been better off wording things differently like he has in the past.

But statistics don't allow for circumstances. Carl will always receive more overall respect than Joe because he was more ambitious. I don't think Carl would ever have repeatedly defended the WBO belt against Joe's opposition, had he found himself in that same situation.

Now if you're going to be objective, Joe's wins weren't all that were they?

Eubank - Was faded, had lost twice to Collins, hadn't fought at SMW for 2 years, and hadn't won there for 3 years. He was also preparing to fight Mark Prince at LHW, when he took the Calzaghe fight on just 11 days notice. He also had no southpaw sparring and he'd got bad knees and couldn't do roadwork etc.

Reid - Gave Joe a close fight and then immediately lost to Branco. Although to be fair to Joe, I do believe that he'd been injured and was going through personal issues at the time. However, I'm of the opinion that Reid would always have given him a competetive fight.

Brewer and Mitchell were nothing special.

Woodhall was a good fighter, but retired after through injury.

Lacy - Joe's best performance. But in my opinion, Lacy was the favourite due to Joe being still relatively unknown to the U.S. fans at the time. Lacy looked the part, but in reality he hadn't beaten anyone of note.

Kessler - Prime and undefeated, but how much had he regressed when Carl fought him?

Hopkins - Joe's best win on paper. But it was an awful fight where Joe threw many more punches, whereas Hopkins landed the much cleaner shots. It was really quality vs quantity.

Roy Jones - A truly pointless fight after Joe had laughed that Roy was past his best and he'd said that he'd be dissapointed if it was to be his last fight.


So it's not like Joe has this great, superior resume.

But he was clearly more talented, and I think he'd definitely have beaten Carl in a fight. But you can certainly understand why Carl gets more respect.

Would Joe have fought Andre Ward and Lucian Bute? I'm not so sure.

Was Joe 'The Man' at two weights? I don't think so. I couldn't call him 'The Man' at LHW, for scraping by Hopkins overwhelming him with volume.

Joe could have moved to LHW much sooner than he did, to try and be 'The Man' yet he wasn't interested. This is what you've got to factor in when analysing both guys resumes. Carl never needed to go up to LHW. Because he was smaller than Joe and there were good fights for him at SMW. But things were different for Joe. There was no Super Six and he came at a time where the British legends had retired. Now of course, that wasn't his fault, and he was unlucky to be caught in the middle of the Benn/Eubank era and the Ward/Froch era. But the point is this, after he'd beaten Eubank and before Lacy and Kessler came on the scene, the SMW division that Joe fought in, was one of the weakest divisions in boxing.

All the big potential fights for Joe, were up at LHW. Now Joe flirted with the idea of going up for many years, yet he never did until 2008. That was despite the fact that he's 6ft, and he had a natural walking around weight of between 192-196 pounds, as well as claiming on numerous occasions that it was extremely difficult to make SMW. Not only that, back in the early 00's, he said he wanted bigger fights, as he'd never beaten a great fighter, and he'd done all he could at SMW. Yet he still never went up. In 2003, it was evident that he could never unify the SMW division with Ottke. And at that time, again Lacy and Kessler were nowhere to be seen. They'd done nothing at that point. So he couldn't unify, and there were no other big fights for him on the horizon. So that was the perfect opportunity for him to move up. The WBO also declared that because he'd defended their belt so many times at SMW, that if he'd have wished to have moved up to LHW, they would have made him the mandatory challenger to whoever held the belt at LHW at the time. (Either DM or Gonzalez) Yet despite everything I've wrote, he decided to remain at SMW, to fight the likes of Mkrtchyan and Salem etc. So this is where the criticism comes from. He had a great career, but it could have been better. The majority of his WBO reign was against weak opposition, and only a handful of those were mandatories, which makes things even worse. Not only that, the WBO wasn't respected back then, and they became a laughing stock with their bogus rankings and the Darrin Morris incident. If you don't know about that, Darrin Morris sadly died, but was then bizarrely MOVED UP the rankings.

So although Joe was better, I think Carl deserves more respect from the fans.

Carl never had the skills to match his ambition.

Whereas Joe never had the ambition to match his skills.

Hopkins didn't land the much cleaner punches. The first few rounds yes, then joe stepped on the gas, and had Hopkins trying to win an oscar to catch some breath, at the end, Joe had found his rythm and was landing the cleaner shots.

I love bernard, one of my all time favorites, but he didn't win that fight, the acting performance he put on was just hilarious, made even more so by the fact that he tried to pull it off a second time.

At the time, it looked like Calzaghe was going on the senior tour to make some money, but it turned out Hopkins was still at the top of his game, and went onto a legendary run after that.

[Box-Office]

No doubt Calzaghe beats Froch, Froch should be happy with the career he had with limited skills he had.

**** defense=Warrior.

[robertzimmerman]

I don't think either of them are that popular to be honest, neither seem to have great personalities.

There's a few things we'llevels have to agree to disagree on, fan base Joe's on really grew post Lacy, but 50,000 mainly Calzaghe fans turned out to see against Kessler.

Groves, his antics and 1st fight controversy made the 80,000.

Everyone seemed to turn on Froch after the fight.

I do agree that when Froch came along the S 6 brought more publicity, even if took Froch until the Ward fight and then ButE fight to get the publicity and backing he should have had.

I give Froch the same credit for ButE as I do Joe for Lacy.

With Hopkins and Kessler on his record, S paw or not I just never going to agree that Joe wouldn't have faced ButE, & honestly don't think many would.

Regarding the injury pull out, it's well documented Joe's hand were Brittle and he was always injuring them.

He broke his hand in the Ashira fight before the Lacy fight and had to fight most of the fight one handed, if you watch the fight you'll see.

It's in joe's book what happened & yes I have read both joe's & Carls lol Re the Lacy fight, obviously his hand was broken before in the previous fight, 2 a few weeks before the fight hurt it again he had to have an injection, he couldn't move it or spar, he wanted to postpone but his Dad told him, if you postpone you may not get another opportunity, if you have to fight one handed then do it coz you can beat him One handed.

His hand cleared up but was obviously concerned going into the biggest fight of his career with lack of preparation & sparring but took the risk.

I've read something similar from Warren, I'd bare in mind that Joe had left him and sour g****s were the order of the day, if you want to believe Warren, Froch turned down 2 offers to fight Calzaghe was his claim in one of yesterday's newspapers.


Joe said before the Lacy fight, in an interview with Maguigan it's on youtube, he wants to win the Lacy fight, then 3 more big fights and he's out.

Which was exactly what he had.

He's later stated he had to retire as he did not want to risk his hands going in a fight, as by this stage they were in bits So he retired.

Regarding this its interesting because Froch is on record himself saying he's always lacked self belief, Groves mentally got to him and he's widely regarded as being one of the most nervous fighters before a match.

I respect your views, agree with some, disagree with others but again I don't see how Tarves etc can be thrown at Calzaghe for retiring when Froch has done exactly the same at the end of his career with Degale, Hopkins, Ward , GGG etc.


Froch was happy to fight Chave but not risk anybody else at this stage, he retired that's fine but people can't say he fought all comers when at the end of his career there was only one fight he was prepared to take.
It's another double standard that seems to happen in the Calzaghe Froch debates.

Respect to both guys, I just think Froch gets given a lot of benefits of the doubt and there's some double standards in the thinking when it comes to both fighters.

I respect what you've wrote, and I appreciate he had injuries. I also appreciate that he'd just left Frank when Frank made those comments. But Frank's comments seemed legit to me, and he gave him an awful lot of praise. I definitely believe him when he says he never believed in himself enough, he didn't want to market himself, (especially in America) and he was content to fight a guy called Freeman Barr. Again, Joe's ego is the size of Wales, and to my knowledge he's never disputed any of those claims.

If you think he'd have fought Bute, that's fair enough. But my opinion is based on his various comments over the years, and his actual actions. In the mid 00's, he spoke of wanting the biggest fights out there. And when Tarver's name was proposed, it was "I don't rate Tarver, he's done nothing apart from beat faded versions of Roy Jones." Then after the Hopkins fight, and after he'd dismissed Roy as any sort of a threat, Pavlik's name was mentioned. Then it was "Pavlik's done nothing to warrant a fight with me." Yet he then bizarrely admitted to the media that they'd actually offered Pavlik a fight in 2006 straight after Lacy. So he hadn't done anything in 2008, yet he'd tried to fight him in 2006 when he was an unknown NABF champ? How does that make sense? In my opinion, Joe would have beaten him easier than Hopkins did, and he'd have gotten more credit, and probably more money. He split the fight with Roy 50/50 for everything and it was a huge flop. Then after Roy, Dawson was mentioned. And again, it was "Dawson's done nothing to warrant a fight with me."

So again, I respect your opinion, but he said he wanted the biggest fights out there, then just dismissed them all, even though he'd been made to fight a guy like Manfredo for some more U.S. exposure. Also, like I've previously mentioned, he turned down an opportunity to fight at LHW in 2003, after Ottke wouldn't unify and there was nobody of relevance left to fight at SMW. Instead of going up, he stayed to fight guys like Mkrtchyan and Salem. He wasn't an ambitious fighter. He also ludricrously claimed that he'd chased a fight with Roy for six years, even though he'd never even fought in the U.S. or in Roy's division. IMHO, I honestly don't believe he'd ever have put himself in a position where he'd have been in a 50/50 fight. Again, his ego is huge, and I think he protected his zero at all costs, because it would have destroyed him mentally had he lost it.

So although I appreciate the fact that he fought and beat guys like Lacy, Kessler and Hopkins etc, I have serious doubts that he'd have fought the likes of Andre Ward. But he still deserves lots of credit, because he was a great fighter and he had a great career. But with all his talent, I think it could have been greater.

With regards to Carl not fighting GGG and DeGale, I think the motivation's gone. To be honest, I don't really like Carl. He's annoyed me more in these last 18 months than what Joe used to. And like Joe, he's got a huge ego. But I do think he'd have been open to fighting GGG and DeGale a few years ago. I think the only motivation he had left was the Chavez fight in Vegas. Which would have been pointless in my opinion, but that's what he wanted. But when he was in his prime and he was motivated, I don't think he'd have ducked anybody. Whereas again, I could never say the same for Joe.

Great debate.

[BodiesInFlight]

**** defense=Warrior.

How come Khan never gets labelled a warrior then?

[robertzimmerman]

Who else was 'the man' at LHW? Chad Dawson?

No, but a fight between them would have been nice.

Chad looked very good at that point. He'd beaten Harding, Adamek, Johnson, and would go on to beat Tarver after Joe had fought Hopkins.

There's no way I could call Joe 'The Man' at LHW for scraping by Hop and beating Roy who'd been destroyed four years earlier, and who hadn't had a top level win for five years.

[robertzimmerman]

Froch struggled against Taylor, Dirrell, Kessler( whom is his rivalry/competition ) and was schooled 12 rounds to 0 against Ward. Froch was NEVER the best in his own weight class whereas Joe Calzaghe is Lineal Champion @ 168. Joe Calzaghe would have beaten ANY VERSION of Bernard Hopkins, due to Calzaghe being more talented.

Joe Calzaghe = All-Time Great. All-Around better fighter.
Carl Froch = B-level fighter in a weak ERA, 2nd Best.
Limited in talent, boxing skills were average.

What makes you so certain that Joe would have beaten any version of Hop? Hop wasn't out skilled or out thought. He was simply outworked. He couldn't handle the pace of the fight. But he landed the cleaner shots. It was a case of quality vs quantity. If Joe had his hands full with Hop at 43, then I think he definitely would have done with a younger version. I think they would always have been close fights, no matter which versions of each fighter were pitted against each other. Why do you think Joe was more talented?

[UNBIASED BOXING]

Calzaghe > Froch

/thread end

[robertzimmerman]

Hopkins didn't land the much cleaner punches. The first few rounds yes, then joe stepped on the gas, and had Hopkins trying to win an oscar to catch some breath, at the end, Joe had found his rythm and was landing the cleaner shots.

I love bernard, one of my all time favorites, but he didn't win that fight, the acting performance he put on was just hilarious, made even more so by the fact that he tried to pull it off a second time.

At the time, it looked like Calzaghe was going on the senior tour to make some money, but it turned out Hopkins was still at the top of his game, and went onto a legendary run after that.

Styles make fights.

Hopkins couldn't cope with the pace. Hopkins was still at the top of his game against a certain level of fighter, that fought in a certain style. He'd struggled with Taylor three years earlier.

The majority of Joe's work was untidy. He concentrated more on volume than accuracy. He threw lots of ineffective cuffing shots. I personally thought it was a draw at the time. Although I've have never watched it back since, because of how awful it was. But maybe I'll watch it again someday.