BoxRec

"I'm a huge fan of Joe Calzaghe's ability and style, that's why I find him annoying! I saw his fight with Sheika and loved it and haven't missed a fight since. But from a fans point of view, it's so annoying having to wait half a year to see him fight."

He was asked if he could go back and do it again what would he do different and he said that he'd go with Jimmy Tibbs and allegedly from the start and finish with Jimmy Tibbs and allegedly.

He said Tibbs got the best out of everyone when he took over completely, mentioning himself, Michael Watson, Mark Kaylor, Barry McGuigan, Jimmy McDonnell, Frank Bruno. Said Tibbs just injected you with positivity and anyone he speaks to who had been trained by Tibbs said the same that it was palpable.

About Warren he said Warren got him the Commonwealth title in next to no time, Naseem Hamed the European title in next to no time and Joe Calzaghe the world title in next to no time, and that he did a textbook job with Ricky Hatton and that Amir Khan is in the safest of hands. Interesting.

Its a disgrace for any boxer to want anything to do with Warren, esp after reading Hattons book and Warrens disgraceful treatment of Vince Phillips.. the guy is just a complete scum and sicko.. he gives Calzaghe a bad name..

Warren remains the best in the business. Simple as that, the facts of Benn's statement speak for themselves. What happened to Vince Phillips that makes it so outrageous? It depends whose account of events you believe.

He's not exactly doing great things for British boxing. Macca-Gunn is an effing joke.

Final Fight wrote:He's not exactly doing great things for British boxing. Macca-Gunn is an effing joke.

Are you going to be changing your name to Mike Haggar next?

ebeneezer wrote:

Final Fight wrote:He's not exactly doing great things for British boxing. Macca-Gunn is an effing joke.

Are you going to be changing your name to Mike Haggar next?

No, he's a big hairy arsehole!

Warren is hideous.. I mean come on, for 10 years he couldn't get ANYBODY for Joe Calzaghe and for five years he couldn't get ANYBODY for Ricky Hatton.. yes the Tszyu and Lacy ones came along but only because the Hatton's Forced it out of Warren and because Lacy and Gary Shaw Forced it out of Warren.. in Hatton's case he was clearly using him as a cash cow and the Hatton's openly say this.. in Calzaghe's case I just think it was a case of Warren being a big fish in a near non existant pond on Sky Sports 2, lol.. and a near non existant fish outside of that pond..

Calzaghe could have had these Lacy and Hopkins kind of fights 10 years ago if he had a more able promoter, and dozens of times over..

There's some bollocks being talked here. If you want to look at reasons why Calzaghe and Hatton didn't have big fights, then have a look at Calzahge and Hatton, they obviously didn't push for those big fights. what about Hatton's big talk about how fighting Witter was written into his contract, what happened to that.

Warren got Hatton Tszyu, on HOME TURF! Do you think that was an easy task, Tszyu was paid through the nose for that fight.

The fact that Nigel Benn speaks so highly of Warren says it all, Benn is a guy who knows boxing from the inside as a fighter.

Whilst I certainly deplore the matchmaking on the most recent card, I think this may well be due to the payday Calzaghe is demanding for the fight, which probably leaves very little for the rest of the card.

Warren certainly has some competition these days, the likes of Hennessy are bringing through their fighters well and developing a decent stable, and fight Academy have high profile Hatton, and solid champ Woods, but you have to ask yourselves why the majority of talent keeps on flocking to Warren?

This is nothing to do with any personal bias, it is just a simple fact that Warren is and remains the market leader.

STP wrote: He said Tibbs got the best out of everyone when he took over completely, mentioning himself, Michael Watson, Mark Kaylor, Barry McGuigan, Jimmy McDonnell, Frank Bruno

that doesnt make sense because he took over mcguigan for the jimmy mac fight didnt he? and when did he ever train big frank??

lets look at it this way...

the reason hatton and calzaghe have drifted along is because of sky........

the fights between benn ...watson...eubank.... happened because they were fighting on terrestrial tv..AND THE PUBLIC DEMANDED IT... 18 million viewers at its peak.....

eubank watson was showing in every pub in britain

nowadays nobody has heard of hatton.......

sky is poison

Greg Nicholas wrote:Warren is hideous.. I mean come on, for 10 years he couldn't get ANYBODY for Joe Calzaghe and for five years he couldn't get ANYBODY for Ricky Hatton.

i don't think he's really delivered for calzaghe either.

1 unification fight in nearly 10 yrs is pants from warren.

he's had plenty of chances to get some unification fights as well.

he even had richie woodhall in his own stable and wouldn't get the 2 together until woodhall lost his title.

missed out on roy jones, bernard hopkins, sven ottke, markus beyer.

One reason definitely IS Sky, because they basically took boxing out of the mainstream and KILLED public demand. Good point that's been raised.

Warren can deliver, that's true, and Calzaghe-Lacy and Hatton-Tszyu were huge nights of boxing.

I agree with MacBoxing, some blame has to lie with the fighters. You can definitely find examples of Calzaghe, Hatton and Harrison pissing about. So, why doesn't he choose more willing participants?

Even Warren makes sure to distance himself somewhat from Calzaghe since that docu, i.e. "With Joe it's strange...", "We have to see if HE wants it", etc etc.

However, is Warren doing great things right now? Did he ever think Mundine would take that measley offer when he's a superstar in Oz? Why couldn't he make Calzaghe-Woodhall when both were champs? Is he holding back British boing by making fights like Macca-Haye unlikely - methinks yes! And what about this execrable Macca-Gunn undercard fight? Or choosing Sakio Bika instead of Markus Beyer?

When I came back to boxing in 2004, and got Sky Sports, I was sickened at the matchups. They weren't fights, they were all showcases. Macca-Montange, Hatton-Stewart & Oliveira, Harrison-Kebede...All the US fights we got were the ones relevant to Hatton (Tszyu), Harrison (Barrera/Morales) and Calzaghe (Lacy). Not good, not good at all.

Sky are doig a great job with repairing the sport at the grassroots level. But with Exclusively Warren with ITV, it kills off great fights.

hitman_hatton1 wrote:

Greg Nicholas wrote:Warren is hideous.. I mean come on, for 10 years he couldn't get ANYBODY for Joe Calzaghe and for five years he couldn't get ANYBODY for Ricky Hatton.

i don't think he's really delivered for calzaghe either.

1 unification fight in nearly 10 yrs is pants from warren.
he's had plenty of chances to get some unification fights as well.

he even had richie woodhall in his own stable and wouldn't get the 2 together until woodhall lost his title.

missed out on roy jones, bernard hopkins, sven ottke, markus beyer.

I think a big reason is that Hatton was his main star.

funso banjo baby wrote:lets look at it this way...

the reason hatton and calzaghe have drifted along is because of sky........

the fights between benn ...watson...eubank.... happened because they were fighting on terrestrial tv..AND THE PUBLIC DEMANDED IT... 18 million viewers at its peak.....

eubank watson was showing in every pub in britain

nowadays nobody has heard of hatton.......

sky is poison

Yeah, but Colin McMillan on ITV for example only got 1-2 million viewers and the Collins/Pyatt fight only got 1.9 million.

It was simply Benn and Eubank, who they were!

STP wrote:

funso banjo baby wrote:lets look at it this way...

the reason hatton and calzaghe have drifted along is because of sky........

the fights between benn ...watson...eubank.... happened because they were fighting on terrestrial tv..AND THE PUBLIC DEMANDED IT... 18 million viewers at its peak.....

eubank watson was showing in every pub in britain

nowadays nobody has heard of hatton.......

sky is poison

Yeah, but Colin McMillan on ITV for example only got 1-2 million viewers and the Collins/Pyatt fight only got 1.9 million.

It was simply Benn and Eubank, who they were!

all the hype in the world wont make the general public watch mcmillan and the others ...good as they were.... u cant compare them to eubank watson or benn............

hatton is comparable tho.....

and the powder keg atmosphere of the manchester arena should have been repeated in every pub and household in britain !!!!!

funso banjo baby wrote:

STP wrote:

funso banjo baby wrote:lets look at it this way...

the reason hatton and calzaghe have drifted along is because of sky........

the fights between benn ...watson...eubank.... happened because they were fighting on terrestrial tv..AND THE PUBLIC DEMANDED IT... 18 million viewers at its peak.....

eubank watson was showing in every pub in britain

nowadays nobody has heard of hatton.......

sky is poison

Yeah, but Colin McMillan on ITV for example only got 1-2 million viewers and the Collins/Pyatt fight only got 1.9 million.

It was simply Benn and Eubank, who they were!

u cant compare them to eubank watson or benn............

Watson? Come on. His fight with McCallum got 2 million viewers, while his fight with Benn got 8 million and his fights with Eubank 14+ million.

STP wrote:and that Amir Khan is in the safest of hands

ha ha ha;)

STP wrote:

funso banjo baby wrote:

STP wrote: Yeah, but Colin McMillan on ITV for example only got 1-2 million viewers and the Collins/Pyatt fight only got 1.9 million.

It was simply Benn and Eubank, who they were!

u cant compare them to eubank watson or benn............

Watson? Come on. His fight with McCallum got 2 million viewers, while his fight with Benn got 8 million and his fights with Eubank 14+ million.

2 Million is still nearly ten times as many as watch Hatton in the UK on Sky.

at its peak 18 million !!! brit v brit

hatter v witter on terestrial

It certainly sounds as if bigtime boxing has taken a pounding in England. Pretty sad state of affairs. I was there in the late 80's and early 90's for some massive fights and they were all shown live on free tv

Unlike America, where virtually everyone has cable, and can therefore get boxing on ESPN, Fox, and HBO via subscription, many people here don't have Sky sports, or box office channels to watch PPV, and the only boxing they are therefore going to see is Sports Network shows on ITV. The problem is, there aren't all that many dates available by the looks of things, and they are not getting a representative picture of the sport.

I miss the days when you used to get early morning or afternoon reruns of the world title fights from the night before, it was exciting to wake up and watch the likes of Hagler, Leonard, Hearns or Duran and you at least had a sense of the world scene, which unless you shell out on Sky, you aren't really getting any more.

ITV should be showing some international competition in addition to fights featuring Warren's British stars, if they want to build a proper boxing following. Sadly, it seems their exclusive contract doesn't allow this, or they don't have enough money to spend.

You cant blame SKY, they presented the money, it's the fighters and promoters that took it.

Trouble with boxing is, it is all about short-term personal gain from all parties, we criticise the FA etc, but they do deliver a semblance of objectivity and their competitions are open and fair.

Boxing smply doesn't have that foundation and just follows the whiff of pain-free money.

Benn is a wise sage and a naive fool when he looks back.

I agree, I never said Sky are to blame. They offered more money than ITV were prepared to pay at the time to showcase boxing,

Ultimately the major reason that the big domestic dust ups aren't happening, is the fighters themselves. I don't think there is the same hunger or levels of pride there once were. TV fighters can make a fortune for relatively low-risk fights. The hungrier fighters are those in the domestic mix like Thaxton, who haven't earnt a fortune, and who at a fairly advanced age is turning in top notch performances.

The Calzaghe's and Hattons of this world have it very cushy and see no reason to upset the apple cart with high risk fights.