The next name I chose to analyse was Joe Calzaghe. Calzaghe is a prime example of why belts & defences carry little if any direct weight in my calibration - you will not find me refer to anyone holding the ABC World whichever weight title for x-amount of years herein. I am concerned only with who a fighter beat & how good that opponent was at the time they were beaten. The concept of a world champion has for the most part been banished to the annals of history as a tangible measure of greatness & holding a world title in 2005 can not with any measure of seriousness be equated to holding one in 1955. Take Calzaghes WBO super middleweight title which was defended against such names (on a world level) obscure names as Tocker Pudwill; Mger Mkrtchyan; Will McIntyre & Juan Carlos Gimenez Ferreyra. That is not to say I penalized anyone for beating so-called tomato cans or taxi drivers - I merely took such events as of no meaningful impact upon a fighters historic greatness. As per my above mentioned criteria I gave Joe credit for wins against (at the time they were beaten) international level fighters (Chris Eubank, Robin Reid, Byron Mitchell, Mario Veit, Peter Manfredo Jr & Roy Jones Jr) ; world class fighters (Jeff Lacy & Mikkel Kessler) & world beaters (well world beater in this case - Bernard Hopkins). Stellar achievements to be sure - but as youll see from his placing on my ranking list hardly unique historically.
Posted on: Tue, 05 Nov 2013 01:58:11 +0000
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