Monzon / Calzaghe hypocrisy !!!

Apparently on here Calzaghe never fought anybody and was a paper champion....Yet Monzon had the greatest reign ever.....let's look at it without rose-tinted glasses.....

Benvenuti - not much cop...couldn't punch.....on the poor side of middleweight champions..
Valdez - was a good fighter....anything special????
Briscoe - Lost and drew to an old man in Griffiths.....
Napoles - A great "welterweight" with his best days behind him....
Griffiths - A great fighter that was ten years on from the third Paret war at welter............

Briscoe more impressive than an unbeaten Lacy???..........Old Griffiths better than a Hoppo win?......Blown up Napoles better than Eubank (before he went and gave Thompson hell) ?????..........Benvenuti better than Jones jr was when he fought Calzaghe perhaps... perhaps not......

Calzaghe's reign lasted 10 years......this guy's lasted 7..........and they both fought stiffs......

Mitchell, Reid, Woodhall all ex-champions.............

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Just wrote something similar on Ghosty's thread.

Come on now Truss, be sensible. Monzon's seven year reign was seven years of unquestioned authority over his division. In his decade-long 168 lb tenure, for how many years was he unquestionably the top dog in his weight class - two?

Briscoe better than lacy? Absolutely. Lacy may have an IBF title to his name but the chasing he got against Joe, and his form since, shows that in Monzon's day he'd be a contender like Benny was, only he'd be a lower ranked one for my money.

It's easy to say that Benvenuti wasn't much cop, but he was twice the legitimate, proper champion in an original weight class. That's not an easy feat in any currency and there are some damn good names on Nino's ledger, as you know. Throw in a Light-Middle title (and I hear he was sawn off in losing that to Kim out in Korea, though I've not seen it myself) an Olympic gold medal in 1960 and the Val Barker trophy as the Games' best stylist (ahead of a certain Mr Ali) then I think it's fair to say that Benvenuti deserves a hell of a lot better than to be labelled as "not much cop."

Valdez, as you say, was a good fighter. Damn good, in fact. How many of Calzaghe's victims would you have ahead of him? Hopkins for sure, Kessler at an absolute stretch, but that's it.

Griffiths was definitely shopworn, but still had enough in the tank to put up one hell of a losing effort against Monzon second time out. Not one of Carlos' best wins (his mauling of Tona, who'd stopped Minter - admittedly on a cut - would have to be considered, too) but still better than all but a precious few of the entries on Calzaghe's ledger.

As Ghsoty's article alluded, all of Monzon's challengers were highly ranked and worthy of a title shot (an undisputed title, at that). Can the same be said of Calzaghe? There is no hint of a Tocker Pudwill, a Branco Sobot, a Manfredo Jr on Monzon's record as champion.

Plenty to admire in Calzaghe's career all the same, mind you, but trying to match it up to Monzon's is pushing it a bit!

I'm not suggesting he wasn't a dominant champion.......Calzaghe seems to come into that category...

I'm just suggesting that you can dissect his record.................

Lewis best wins ina lot of eyes....Holyfield, Ruddock, Tyson were all against guys on the slide....

Under scrutiny.............Briscoe???? lost to a weary Griffiths...Griffiths vanquisjed ten years after the Paret wars???...Napoles was getting on and was a welter!!!!

Benvenuti ????? average champ............

We can see what we want.......................Nobody in Hearns league there.....

Sure Griffiths and Napoles were but NOT AT THE TIME they fought him!!!!!!!

You can dissect monzon's record and put him in klitschko territory... Dominant in a poor era. It's certainly true to a point, he never looked anything special but he got the job done. You can say the same to a degree about the competition of Duran ( you certainly would truss!) and Louis. The thing is, if you have a dominant champion, it usually makes the rest seem also rans. Were it not for Duran, would de Jesus have been a great? If Ali had won Frazier 1, beat foreman and retired, would we wax as lyrical about the 70's heavies. Or would they just have been contenders/guys that got found out.

Obviously, I don't buy that last argument myself, because we have eyes and can judge quality, but I do believe that the quality of the opposition isn't as straight forward to analyse as is sometimes made out. If you've been undisputed champion for a few years, you aren't going to face many other champions at your own weight.

This guy likes the internet noticing him, huh.

"Monzon"............

TRUSSMAN66 wrote:"Monzon"............

Monzon isn't one of my favourites. I can't claim to have seen many of his fights. I was just reading about him around the time i signed up to the forum, and so it was the first name that popped into my head. I have absolutely no opinion on whether he was better than Joe Calzaghe or not.

You seem like a bit of a strange one, no offence. Rather than make constant threads with sensationalist headlines and numerous punctuation marks to grab the attention of those who haven't been hooked in by the headline itself, why not try to discuss something constructively, without taking a strong opinion either way...using actual sentences? Quality over quantity, and all that.

Looks like he's got you sussed then truss

GORDY has TRUSS sussed...it's not rocket surgery or brain science.

Looks like I've been outed....

Thought there were some new faces in the Oyster lately!!

Didn't think you'd notice the faces given the preferred positions I gather you choose to adopt in the Oyster

Few of the criticisms that plague Calzaghe can be levelled at Monzon I think. He may never have beaten a peak all time great middleweight but that could be levelled at Hopkins, Hagler, Hearns and many others. Massive differance between how the two went about their careers.

I might agree with the point though that his complete dominant over his own era might result in him gaining a slightly inflated status in head to head matches against other greats.

But Monzon cemented his status as the top middleweight quickly and then defended that position against the top challenges out there on a very consistent basis. Calzaghe was pretty much the opposite.