I've had breaks in my hands and fingers yes, have I ever been mad enough to punch someone with one? No!Tomasino wrote:davie wrote:I have heard it argued that his bad hands made him the fighter he was in his late career.Counter-puncher wrote:
Late career Calzaghe but with good hands would be awesome
With good hands he was a power puncher with a good knockout ratio.
Had his hands held out would he have dished out that fast punching master class to Lacy,
Had he been looking for that big finishing blow would Kessler walked him on to something or B-Hop been able to clown him?
We'll never know but it would have been interesting to find out.
Have you ever tried to hit with a broken hand? I bet anyone who says having smashed hands 'made Calzaghe' hasn't. He would have been better had his hands held up. Obviously.
But in the fights I'm talking about Calzaghe never necessarily had "broken hands" as such but he had had a long history of hand injuries and knew they were fragile and easily damaged.
And as such he tailored his style to be quicker and lighter punching. I genuinely think this approach was perhaps a contributing factor towards him being as good as he was late in his career(but also recognise that with good hands and with his skills, he could have been terrifying, remember it was me who first suggested Calzaghe with good hands in this thread)
Of course there were some fights where he damaged his hand during the bout and he would of course been more effective if his hands had remained intact.
The absolute master class he dealt Lacy was based on fast combination punching. If he had the ability to load up and chose to do so he would not have landed anywhere near as many scoring punches.
Chances are, with good hands, he'd have laid Lacy spark out. But I don't think I would have rated a 6 round KO as highly as I did that magnificent display. And who knows, maybe if he was looking for the big shot instead of blinding Lacy with dazzling combinations, he might just have walked onto one or two of Lacy's famous left hooks and the story of the fight could have panned out differently.
As I said, Calzaghe with good hand would have been interesting to see and might very well have been even better. Certainly the idea of combining early Calzaghes heavy handedness with the great fighter he later became sounds like a devastating prospect.
But I can see the logic in saying that his style change did in fact make him more effective and were the key reasons behind his career defining wins.