Agree with your outcome, except I see it as a little closer than you. Hopkins never would've dealt terribly well with Calzaghe's work-rate & endurance. His activity would've caused Hopkins trouble right throughout the fight. For his part, Hopkins showed me enough in their actual fight (I thought Calzaghe squeaked by him, 1-2 points in it) to get the nod had he been severla years younger. He was better at pulling the trigger in 2000 & did it more frequently, with what I think were just generally better reflexes. He was no less cagey than years later, but just a little faster, busier, & more athletic. I can see this something like 7-5 for Hopkins, with a few close rounds which could make the result mildly debatable. Regarding Calzaghe being past his prime when he fought Hopkins, I have heard this on occasion, mostly from Calzaghe supporters. There could be some truth to it --- they want to point out that he was moving up in weight & this was his first fight there, but I don't buy that as a factor against him. His hands? Maybe. I think his hands were in better shape at different times in his career than at the point they met, but if he really was past his best, it sure wasn't by much, & not nearly as much as even a well-aged fighter as Hopkins was. Give me Hopkins by close, but fair, decision here.
Agree with every word. TBH, I was instigating a bit in the first post. It's a close fight. But one Hopkins pulls out. I think Hopkins was a significantly better fighter, but styles favour Calzaghe here as you say.
So why then did Hopkins attend a meeting with Showtime's Jay Larkin in 2003 and when asked if he wanted to fight Joe Calzaghe, Hopkins said he would so long as he was paid $3million and that the fight took place in the US? Then, when told immediately that Calzaghe agreed to the fight on all of the terms asked for by Hopkins and his team, why did Hopkins then demand $6million and then pull the plug when this new amount was not forthcoming? Why did Hopkins wait until 2008, long after he had jettisoned King, before he finally got around to fight Joe? :dunno: Why did Larkin, in print, state that: "Bernard is pretty shrewd, he's no dummy and has done a wonderful job of self-management over his career, but he had then no desire to Joe Calzaghe, that much is pretty clear" These are not my words, they are Jay Larkin's, which are committed to print. This is a man who was in the room at the time this happened. Why did he not allude to these contractual disputes and instead tell the story he tells? MTF :dunno:
1...Hopkins was angling for the best possible fight with the highest reward. Meaning angling for a fight with Oscar to bring him twice that money...which he got the next year. In fact, he got two fights out of it. Hopkins got over a million to fight Robert Allen for a third time...that's when Oscar "beat" Felix Sturm. 2...Calzaghe was exclusively with Showtime and the truth of the matter is he stood to make more fighting Oscar on HBO than Calzaghe who had no intention of leaving Showtime.
He fought Oscar almost 2 full years after the meeting I described and had no fewer than three fights in between time. Why not take $3million, beat Joe then fight ODLH on HBO for $10million? He got a pittance by comparison for fighting Hakkar and Joppy when he could have had $3million for fighting Calzaghe. In any event, you can spin this however you want with Hopkins playing his cards right etc etc etc. That doesn't detract from the fact that Warren was in the States with the express intention of arranging a fight between Calzaghe and Hopkins, a metting was conviened between the relevent parties, at this meeting Hopkins was asked for his price and got it then the next day he decided he didn't want the fight for whatever reason you like. Calzaghe v Hopkins didn't happen in 2003 because of Hopkins. Whatever the reasoning behind it, this is incontrovertible. MTF
The spin is on your end...sorry. Look at what happened. Joe was entrenched on Showtime and more importantly Frank Warren. I need to check my math but how does a 2003 meeting turn into almost two full years when the match with oscar happened in Sept. 2004? Secondly, Hopkins for Joppy in late 2003 (on King's PPV card) then fought Allen in June 2004, Oscar that September. Third, thinking Hopkins could have easily gone between Showtime and HBO to fight Calzaghe and then Oscar is incredibly naive. Did you catch the bit where I said Hopkins got the Allen fight as part of the DLH deal? I've got no axe to grind with Joe and it's well documented I'm one of the biggest Hopkins haters over the past several years, "however" Hopkins didn't "duck" Calzaghe in the least. I fully believe he pulled out of teh showtime deal the first time because of money and King. After that he continually talked about getting 20 title defense. After the Joppy fight fight he got the allen fight then the DLH fight. Let's be honest here...Joe was just past the Will McIntyre title defenses at the title. he was more than happy collecting his showtime money. He also said he wasn't really interested in fighting Jones or Hopkins at that time. His words.
Did Calzaghe offer to travel to the US and fight Hopkins in return for Hopkins fighting Calzaghe in 2003? Yes or no? :dunno: did Hopkins agree to the fight and then pull out by asking for stupid money? Yes or no? :dunno: There is no spin here from me. All the spin is coming for people trying to justify the fact (and there may well have been justifiable reason or they may not have been- all we can do is speculate) that Hopkins agreed to fight Calzaghe, on agreed terms in 2003 and then pulled out. You do this yourself with your 'I firmly believe' statement' (you aren't spinning anything though, huh?). What you or I believe pales when compared to the views and experiences of the man who offered to put up the money to make the fight happen in 2003. In spite of this, and in the face of a published, unequivical statement of fact by the man who was in the middle of the negotiations as they happened, people will say that Calzaghe 'stayed at home' and didn't want to fight a 'prime' Hopkins. This is nonsense. MTF
This isn't spin... How many big time Frank Warren stars fought for him in the United States? Now answer this... How many big Frank Warren stars LEFT him then immediately came to the U.S. and fought. With this said, the reality of Calzaghe coming here to fight under Warren's banner was nil. Joe didn't show here until he left Warren. Correct me if I'm wrong...the same was true with Naz, Hatton (though I think the Collazo and Urango fights were with Warren...could be wrong) and now Khoward. For fucks sake, stop making me defend Hopkins.
You aren't addressing the points MTF is making. I'd pick Calzaghe to win clearly over Hopkins. I think he was a better fighter than Hopkins at every point in their careers and should be the favorite at any point in their careers which basically overlap. As for 2000, Hopkins was mostly unproven. Why? Because he didn't have much competition at 160 and he didn't look for any competition anywhere else. His best performance was probably a clear loss to Jones at that point. His best win? I guess maybe the shutout and stoppage of 32-0 Glen Johnson. But that win probably isn't as good as it would seem now. Johnson went on to lose not just his next fight, but his next two fights to fighters as ordinary as Merqui Sosa and Joseph Kiwanuka. His best win around this time? I'd say for comparison to Calzaghe, it would be his excellent win over Keith Holmes who brings some of the same things to the table as Calzaghe. But Holmes wasn't as good as Calzaghe p4p and he was quite a bit smaller than Calzaghe which is further proven by him making 154 toward the end of his career. Now compare that to Calzaghe...Calzaghe was similar to Hopkins in that he pissed away much of his prime not fighting the best, but he did have a win over Eubank and that's better than Glen Johnson by quite a lot. It's also better than Keith Holmes, imo. You've got the mediocre performance against Robin Reid, but that matches up with Hopkins' mediocre performances against Allen 1 and Mercado 1 and I think Robin Reid was better than either of them. There are reasons to pick Hopkins, but I just think Calzaghe was better, his style and punch volume would overcome the difficulty most opponents had with Bernard, and he was bigger. Oh yeah, I liked him a lot more than Bernard, too, haha, but that doesn't make my pick any different than anyone else who has picked so far from what I can tell.
Again, though, this does not address the fact that Calzaghe and Hopkins' respective people had a meeting in early 2003 at Showtime where Hopkins was asked specifically howm much he wanted for fighting Calzaghe. He quoted a figure of $3million and said the fight had to happen in the US. Warren immediately agreed to the proposals and so did Hopkins. Then Hopkins doubled his demands a day later and the fight was pulled. At the risk of repeating myself, this is a fact. Jay Larkin, the man whose job it was to make the fight, is in print in a book I own and states that this is exactly how things went down. In light of this, what does Werren's infuriating reticence have to do with anything? No-one is more critical of Werren than I have been over the years, but the man in the middle of the negotiations tells us that Hopkins is at fault here MTF
I thought the negotiations were in 2002? By early 2003, Hopkins was already under contract to fight Hakkar on HBO. That fight was sometime in March '03...I forget exactly when, just that it was shortly after Roy-Ruiz. I distinctly remember it being 2002. That was the year he fucked over DiBella, had his beef with Bouie Fisher and thought that he could do whatever he wanted without repercussions, only for a court of law to tell him different. It was also that summer when he negotiated a three-fight contract with Showtime (after he and Roy once again failed to successfully negotiate a rematch), part of which included the Calzaghe fight. All of that fell through, leading to his sititng out the rest of the year. In 2003, he was stuck fighting Hakkar (well, not stuck, but you know what I mean), negotiated a fight with Toney that eventually fell apart, then fought Joppy for the last fight of his contract with King.
It was 2002. My apologies. :scratcher: Anyway, for the third time here is the exact transcript of what went down: A teleconference was set up in my office in New York on 30th July 2002, and on the call was myself, Don King who was in the room, Frank Warren and Bernard Hopkins' lawyer, Arnold Joseph. Along with Arnold was a woman named Linda Carter, who was there on behalf of Bernard. We asked Arnold if Bernard wanted to fight Joe Calzaghe and we asked him how much money he would want if he did. The response that we got was $3million and the fight would have to take place in the US. After a little while scratching our head, we said 'Okay, Done'. Frank Warren agreed on the spot, Don King agreed and we agreed, so as far as we were concerned we were all singing off the one hymn sheet. Arnold excused himself with Linda and I can only assume it was to call Bernard. Either that day or the next, I'm just not certain about that particular timeframe, they came with a new demand- $6million, double the sum which had been agreed. In addition to the Calzaghe fight, we had offered him $1million to fight Morrade Hakkar, and the winner of that bout to fight Harry Simon. Then he would have had the bout with Joe but when he came back asking for six million, the deal blew up spectacularly. I thought that the Calzaghe-Hopkins was a spectacular prospect but it wasn't to be. Bernard's pretty shrewd, he's no dummy and has done a wonderful job of self-management in his career, but he had then no desire to fight Joe Calzaghe, that much is pretty clear. Joe gets criticised sometimes for not having fought more big named Americans, but in this case the fault has never rested with him. Jay Larkin, Showtime TV Vice President of Sports and Event Programming, in No Ordinary Joe, Brian Doogan at p197-98 You are about right on the Hakkar fight: as you can see, the plan was for that fight to take place, then Simon, then Calzaghe. People can excuse Bernard if they want but to suggest that Calzaghe didn't want to fight a 'prime' Hopkins is clearly false. MTF
Calzaghe's a dickhead, a boring insecure dickhead with a wife who looks like a Transalvanian lady boy.
Calzaghe's a big Italian fud who likes the bum but only had the guts to go half way when choosing his spouse.
Hopkins did NOTHING after round three. The judge who had it 116-111 was bang on. You need to change your scoring criteria if you're giving points for doing fuck all and rolling on the canvas like a bitch.
Calzaghe beat a MUCH OLDER (in boxing age) fighter than he by slapping with enthusiasm... Hopkins was a spurt fighter for a good 4 or 5 years prior to facing Cazaghe Hopkins at his peak is a much better fighter than the guy calzaghe beat Calzaghe, if anything was BETTER at that point than he ever was when he was younger... Joe Calzaghe is the most overrated fighter of the last 20 years... guy is a slapping joke of a "great" fighter he was a very good, notable champion in a historically shit division who's best wins were against an unproven, one-dimensional slugger and two guys who were ready for the retirement home (one of them was in fact already dead)... the rest of his comp is a pile of filthy dog excrement that he often looked mediocre and tedious against
