Lacy win discredited after Calzaghe, Enzo win rated for Haye

I think Joe Calzaghe gets way to much stick for his career, particularly for the Jeff Lacy fight. Despite the Lacy fight being an absolute masterclass agaisnt a dangerous powerful world title holding fighter on the way up, it is somehow used against Joe. Other fighters are forgiven losses to journeymen and fluke defeats, while Joe gets abuse for SD's against Reid and Hopkins. Take Haye - his cruiserweight career is rarely critisised, but who did he fight - Mormeck and Enzo. Mormeck was a good win, but Enzo has faded as much if not more than Lacy since the defeat. However, people seem to think this is because of the Haye fight that Enzo has fallen from World Class to domestic level at best - whereas Lacy was never World Class. I'm not saying Joe is the ATG No.1, but he was an amazing talent who achieved an awful lot in boxing and was genuine World Class.
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geoff joe refused to test himself for 10 years.

I think Joe does deserve some criticism for staying in the UK for a lot of his defences, but on the other hand he definitely does get short-changed when it comes to people recognising his wins against Lacy and also Hopkins. He beat a very good version of B-Hop (who is still at World level regardless of age), and Lacy was supposed to be 'the next Mike Tyson', but Joe took him on and tested himself against a hungry fighter, and beat him convincingly. Yes Joe fought a lot over here during his career, but his biggest fights came at the end of his career and he went out on top- not an achievement many boxers can share with him.

Calzaghe is a hard one because he deserves harsh criticism as well as high praise, however the criticism is self inflicted and cannot see how he can be defended in some matters of his career.

An incredible amount of his opponents were woefully poor and only tested himself on a few occasions which for a potential Hall of Famer is not right.

He should get credit for his Lacy, Kessler and B-Hop wins, however out of 46 fights and wins that's an incredibly low number.

You cannot rank boxers on potential over what they actually did, which is the common defense used for Tyson.

I truly think he was a superb boxer who may not have beaten everyone in history in his weight classes but no one would have had an easy night with him, however the one true measure of ranking should in my opinion be actual achievement.

When you have to scrap the barrel with Bika, Reid, Manfredo Jr, a 1997 version of Eubank and a shot Jones Jr to include in his top 8 wins, you can see why people criticize, which he only has himself to blame.

I think Haye is starting to come in for criticism for his heavyweight career so far. I imagine if he retires without facing a Klitschko he will suffer similar levels of criticisms to Calzaghe.

The problem with Calzaghe is that there were bigger and better fights around him for most of his career. He never really chased them until at the very end and he wanted to cash in.

Haye cv is no better than Calzaghe but while he was at cruiser at least he was proactive in fighting ranked guys. It was a weak division but he cleaned most of it up in a few fights and moved up. Calzaghe on the other hand spent the guts of a decade fighting 2nd tier guys when there were obviously much better fights around.

Unless Haye can beat both Klitschkos though I would saye Calzaghe will rank well in front of him when its all said and done.

Being a Welshman and a big Calzaghe fan I may be a bit biased.

All points above are fairly valid but I lean mostly towards Public Enemy's side of the debate.

True he did have many soft defences, but I think a lot of this was contributed to Frank Warren, he was contractually obliged to fight who Frank put in front of him really. Hence the split late in career to chase the bigger fight.

And in fairness he did beat some quality opponents -

Chris Eubank
Robin Reid
Richie Woodhall
Charles Brewer
Byron Mitchell
Jeff Lacy
Mikkel Kessler
Bernard Hopkins
Mario Veit

to name a few......

But I'm sure there's someone about who'll pick holes in those mentioned

Mario Veit? Quality.

And on that bomshell, I'm going to bed!

Veit was undefeated in 30 fights in the first fight

Salita was 30-0 when Khan knocked him out in 1 round - does anyone rate that win ? Hell no. Undefeated records mean nothing in this day and age. Mario Veit was an average European fighter - and that's being nice.

With the exception of Hopkins, and I say Hopkins loosely, all of Calzaghe's wins over former/current champions haven't proved much. Eubank was two fights away from retirement and actually lost those two fights - Richie Woodhall was coming back from a loss and then retired after the Calzaghe defeat - Reid was coming back from a loss and then failed to achieve after the Calzaghe defeat, not to forget it was a SD - Byron Mitchell was coming back from a defeat and then failed to achieve afterwards - Lacy was green and failed to achieve after the Calzaghe defeat - Kessler has done OK by beating Froch in a close fight but he let's not forget the fact that he was beat up by Andre Ward.

There isn't one single decisive win on Calzaghe's record. But don't get me wrong, a half-decent win over Eubank and wins over Lacy and Kessler are good achievements. But the question of whether Calzaghe reached greatness is easy to answer: no.

I would rank the two wins on par with one another.

Both Enzo and Lacy were considered dangerous opponents at the time but neither were genuinly world class.
A weak division and a shrewd promoter were the main reasons Enzo managed to bag himself a belt. The fight with Haye was hyped up due to the fact it was a unification match-up between two British fighters.

Like Enzo, Lacy was powerful but very limited. He is just one name in a long list of boxers that have been hyped up as the "Next Tyson" but turned out to be a huge disappointment.

Both Lacy and Enzo have failed to achieve anything of note since those losses. Even prior to those defeats, neither man had really beaten a top level operator.

I'd rate Enzo as a better fighter than Lacy. At least Enzo can box. Lacy was a flat-footer predictable plodder. He could punch and that's it.

I'd definately rate Lacy above Enzo. He was always in great shape, and, despite the battering he took proved he has a great chin and heart. And he had power - which combined with a great chin means the opponent needs to be alert for the full 12 rounds. Any good powerful fighter coudl blow Enzo away inside a couple of rounds, but fair play to Big Mac, seems a nice guy, has power and decent skills.

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