Greater/Better: Calzaghe vs Tszyu

???

 

I'd take Cal by a comfortable margin.

 

Agreed.

 

If you think the Jazzerciser is better than Cool Vince Phillips, then he's greater

 

Calzaghe is both greater and better.


A grossly underrated fighter who gets fobbed off because he was an unlikeable twat and not Roy Jones.

 

Calazaghe. Beat better guys and had more intangibles (heart, toughness) in his favor.

Tszyu might have been superior in terms of technical ability but Calzaghe had the more complete package.

 

Huge Tszyu fan, but his resume sucks. Pretty similar to Calzaghe's, except for Calzaghe's final 3 wins--Kessler, Hopkins, and Jones.

 

Tszyu had fun fights

 

The Jones win meant nothing. Roy was done.

Calz admitted himself that he wouldn't beat a prime Roy.

 

calz clearly for both, and I'm far from a fan

 

I agree but the manner in which he beat Jones was remarkable. Most of the guys who beat Jones did so by railroading the leftovers but Calzaghe actually let Roy do his thing. This wasn't some roughneck just battering an old man from pillar to post. Roy actually got off to a great start and then got totally outboxed and busted up.

All those other mooks like Lebedev etc just wore him down and were still made to look dumb on occasion.

Don't get me wrong, I know the score here, but Calzaghe at least did it differently.

 

Complete aside, I always thought the way Jones repeatedly wobbled a granite chinned guy like Lebedev while massively conceding and being completely shot, is a massive feather in Jones' cap as a puncher. He truly was one of the hardest hitters ever.

 

It was the timing. He'd let guys walk into shit. He'd have battered him in his prime. Paint job late stoppage, no question. Lebedev was just a toughie, ditto Glen Johnson who'd been totally embarrassed by Hopkins and bamboozled by Ordinary Ottke.

Calzaghe at least stood in front of Jones and didn't plod gamely into one haymaker after another waiting for Jones to get tired and fall over.

 

Jones the hardest hitter? Wich Jones? If we are talking about RJJ than I'll say hell fuckin no. He was lightning fast and had blinding power. But as far as sheer power no way...wasn't not even top 10 of all time. When you have guys like Inoue, Shavers, Foreman, Jackson, Wilder ect....Jones is not even in the equation.

 

Reggie Johnson fought a lot of studs and none of them dropped him like Jones did. Jones didn't have bludgeoning power but he could turn lights out.

 

Just for the record I'm not saying Roy did not have ko power obviously he did but if we are talking in terms of one of the hardest hitters in history there is a long list of people that belong ahead of Roy. When people think of power guys like Ernie Shavers come to mind, Mike Tyson, Julian Jackson. Those guys had raw power that could turn out the lights at any Moment. Roy didn't have that kind of power. He had speed and was able to hit guys with accurate fast Punches that they didn't see coming. Even a guy with average power but good speed can turn out the lights if he lands on the button. Roy was a great fighter, hof, a legend but let's not get carried away he wasn't one of the hardest hitters of all time ...gimme a break.

 

I wouldn't classify Roy as a top 10 hitter of all time, though he's the biggest puncher 168 has ever seen, but LMAO @ listing Inoue!

The fuck has Inoue done to be considered a top 10 all time puncher? Inoue doesn't deserve to be in the same breath as Jackson and Foreman in terms of power.

Prime Roy was a bigger puncher than Inoue. He goddamn sure KO'd more proven, and durable guys than Inoue.

Don't let your hate make you say stupid shit.

 

Roy at 160-168 is easily one of the biggest hitters ever. Not as high as top 10, but he's elite in that area.

 

The moment you said something positive about Roy, BF came out his hole in an attempt to turn a Calz vs Tszyu thread into an anti-Jones thread.

Then later on he'll be telling us that this forum is obsessed with Roy...

 

Back on topic: Yeah, Calz for both. Tszyu had the P4P edge in power and technique, but Calz has him in just about every other area: Speed, stamina, chin, ring IQ, heart... all goes to Joe.

 

He's an elite hitter at 160 to 168 and borderline at 175. He took Hill out with a single body shot and Griffin out off a single hook.

I read an letter that somebody once sent in to Boxing Monthly saying that Jones KO of Hill did not compare to what Bob Foster had done to Dick Tiger.

It got very short-shrift from the editor.

Hill was a career 175lbr who had gone the distance with people like Hearns and Michelczweski. His durability was never in question. Jones, by contrast, had come up from 160.

Foster was a massive natural light-heavy who stood a full 6-4 and had fought at Heavyweight. The guy was a freak.

And Tiger had come UP from 160.

The fact that anyone would try to dismiss what Jones did to Hill by contrasting it with what Foster did to Tiger is just mad.

Foster , Saddler, and Hearns are just three guys who could not have been constructed any better for the purpose at hand.

They occupy another level which is so high that anyone immediately below cannot be immediately dismissed.

 

I'd have him firmly in the top ten, if I'm honest.

 

Put it this way...Roy fought Ruiz and went the Distance with Ruiz.

Tua knocked Ruiz out in 20 seconds of the first Round.

So much for "Roy's freakish" power debate.

 

How many middleweight legitimately hit harder than Roy?

I bet most people can't name 10.

Let's start by discounting some of the baloney entrants that inevitably make it onto lists.

Stanley Ketchel- how much of his power is Pure Bert Sugar is another matter.

Same with Sam Langford, another killer that never seems to have killed anybody and dined out on how Jack Johnson was supposedly terrified of him and coukdnt get fights at Middle because blah blah.

Tony Ayala Jr, see above. More cudda wudda shudda.

Suuure.

Legitimately, you've got :-

The Ray's, Robinson and Leonard. I think Jones might have been shaded out by Robinson at 160, but not by Leonard.

Tony Zale and Hurricane Carter are up there.

Monzon is right there.

Julian Jackson is absolutely there.

Mike McCallum is there and so is Nigel Benn who was stuffing guys at 168- good guys too.

Hearns, aforementioned freak, maybe John Mugabi.

Modern dudes? Maybe GGG, Pavlik and Canelo. Maybe. It's hard to discount Canelo caving in Saunders face. But is Saunders. It's hard to look past GGG crumpling Macklin or Pavlik icing Taylor.

Roy would have been stopping guys they stopped, too.

Hagler? More a sharpshooter than a banger. Believe me, Roy is getting Antuofermo out of there. One way or the other.

And don't say "oh he's just more athletic or faster". Powerful Punches are just that. Powerful. Punches. Swings and misses don't count no matter how power the "miss" is.

 

Please name all the other MWs/SMWs who would KO a heavyweight capable of going the distance with Hasim Rahman. I'll help you out, there's ONE fighter who could possibly do it, and he peaked 140 years ago.

If you have to compare Roy's to other heavyweights, then the proof is in the pudding.

 

Hurricane Carter beat Florentino Fernandez in 1 round. Gene Fullmer went 15 rounds.

Gene Fullmer was a pussy....... Its the ONLY conclusion I can draw.

 

I posted this a while ago on ESB, but I think it fits well here too.

Jones KOed Sosa with one punch. The same guy who wouldn't budge while fighting toe to toe with the best of his era. Sugar Boy Malinga took the best Benn, Eubank, Reid, Rocchigiani & Jarvis could dish out. Jones iced him with one punch. Thomas Tate is the only man to finish twelve rounds with Julian Jackson, and in it he took hellacious full blown punches from a man you imply is top three with GGG, and Jones leveled him, again, with one punch. Virgil Hill, a guy who took the best from Tiozzo, Ashely, Mormeck, Michalczewski &c; before Jones took him out with a single body punch. Don't get me wrong, none of the aforementioned are great fighters, but they're all big Punchers and men much bigger than Jones. They couldn't do what he could.

Enough? There's more. Reggie Johnson, a middleweight who went twelve with Tarver, was dropped twice by Jones. Even a guy like Mike McCallum, with his granite chin which went to war, unscathed, with Julian Jackson. Jones dropped him. Undefeated Griffin who took big shots of Jones himself, and while shot went 12 with Antonio Tarver, was KOed in one, by one punch. The icing on the cake is that a shot Jones, devoid of his blazing hand-speed was hurting a genuinely granite chinned cruiserweight, Denis Lebedev, with straight rights. And he did it multiple times.

 

Stanley Ketchel, Sam Langford, Battling Big Balls and Wild Willy Windmill, they'd have done it, done it and gone whoring on the same night too!!

 

Tbf, I'd actually give Langford a very real chance but it wasn't him I was talking about. He was about the same weight as Jones, too.

So that's two. Out of hundreds of thousands.

 

People think a puncher is somebody who liquidises your dome.

No.

Its a guy who gets you to be on the floor for 10 seconds or more.

You might be up and about at 11, fitbaw a flea, but if a guy zaps you and you're not up at 10, that's a knockout

If he does it often, he's a big puncher..

I don't give a fuck if you never beat the bag with those horrific thudding blows that Demosey or Foreman or Shavers did.

If you can land on the head, like the tongue of a frog hitting a fly, and leave the guy on queer Street for 11 seconds, you go into the big puncher category.