BoxRec

Just read someone else in a thread in British and Irish say that Joe used to come in at a "decent sized cruiserweight" for his super middle fights. I seem to remember Joe being a shade under 6' and even looking very skinny and undersized when stood against Hopkins at his Light Heavy debut weigh in.

Was Calzaghe a particularly big SMW? It seems like guys like Froch, Ward, Kessler and Dirrell even are natuarally bigger dudes. I didn't post on these boards until the very tail end of Joe's career so i don't know what the general opinion around this issue was, or even if it was an 'issue' at all.

Anyone got anything enlightening for me?

clopixolacuphase wrote:Just read someone else in a thread in British and Irish say that Joe used to come in at a "decent sized cruiserweight" for his super middle fights. I seem to remember Joe being a shade under 6' and even looking very skinny and undersized when stood against Hopkins at his Light Heavy debut weigh in.

Was Calzaghe a particularly big SMW? It seems like guys like Froch, Ward, Kessler and Dirrell even are natuarally bigger dudes. I didn't post on these boards until the very tail end of Joe's career so i don't know what the general opinion around this issue was, or even if it was an 'issue' at all.

Anyone got anything enlightening for me?

Calzaghe was 182 lbs. on fight night against Hopkins fwiw. That's the only fight night weigh in data I have for him. Hopkins refused the HBO scale that night but was 180 against Pavlik and more recently 186 for Dawson, so the size difference wasn't that major despite their differences in visual definition.

He probably walked around as a decent sized Cruiser as even the most in-shape elite fighters of recent times tend to walk around perfectly lean a few weight classes higher than what they fight at but I doubt he entered any of his SMW fights much heavier than 175-180. He did look a tad heavier against Jones than he had against B-Hop though.

I have no idea if he was a serious drainer, but as the OP metioned he didn't look big compared to many of his opponents.

He did often complain about making weight...though he often complained about lots of things lol

In his autobiography he admitted to occasionally walking around at 13stone 10lbs and occasionally 14stone 4lbs depending on how much he enjoyed himself between fights but he always seemed to make the weight very comfortably.

calzaghe never touched weights which is why he looked smaller than the other guys and skinny.
Id be very suprised if he had walked arouund at anything more than 182lbs at his peak....calzaghe was someone who was very confortable for most his career at 168 until the last few years when he struggled, than he did noticeably look a bit less defined as a LH....with a lot of these guys its hard to tell till u are up close and personal with them....I remmeber back in 2006 being in a queue to go into the York Hall next to Stevie Collins. Im 5ft 11 but i swear Collins looked a couple of inches taller and freaking huge. He looked about 210 pounds. EUbanks too I shook hands with in London, his hand was huge his fist like a rock. Eubanks too seemed about 6ft tall in person and about 15 stones.