Roy Jones.

It's ridiculous to say anything else than that Jones' win against Ruiz was top quality.

 

It's instantly dismissed for two reasons.


1. Ruiz didn't have a style that was pleasing to watch.

2. Roy didn't go on to fight Lewis.


They don't seem to take into consideration the following points:


Roy was a 34 year old LHW, who'd had almost 50 fights.

The weight disadvantage.

How effective Ruiz was, and who he'd beaten.

The fact that no former MW in 106 years, had moved up and won the title.

The manner in which Roy won.

The fact that Roy started out at JMW and MW.

The fact that there wasn't a large queue of other LHW's knocking down Ruiz's door for a fight.

The fact that it was almost 12 years ago, and nobody's done it since.

 

Not surprising. Jones had less than 10 fights at the weight, and only one was against a significant opponent.

As far as single weight divisions go, Jones did his most damage at LHW, sadly he never challenged the true Champion of the division and lost badly to Tarver.

 

Obviously it mattered to Jones, that's why the fight didn't happen.

Maybe, maybe not. But Hopkins has shown more willingness to make big fights than Jones throughout his career.

Roy needed to fight somebody significant. If he wasn't going to travel to fight Dariusz who was the true Champion of his division, than the Hopkins fight should have come off.

Not really. Hopkins was coming off a great win over Tito. And unlike Jones, cleaned out his division and reigned undisputed. There was no Dariusz phantom hanging over his head.


Them comments make no point. Calzaghe had just clowned Jones and beat him to a bloody mess. What he said was understandable. Jones did not look like an attractive opponent after that embarrassment. Even after the Lacy performance, Jones didn't look like a hot investment for Hopkins, which is why he doesn't get much credit for that win.

 

He has a good resume, maybe a great one, just not an outstanding one given his talent and the fighters he was active with. I think him and Dariusz at LHW during that timeframe are on the level. They both beat a few good opponents and a lot of bad/average ones.

Collins from 95-96 got the wins over Eubank and Benn. These guys weren't at their best but they were better wins than the versions of Vinnie Paz and McCallum that Jones dominated.

 

His win over Malinga was a good win. Malinga was decent and caused problems to guys like Benn and Eubank.

Yes, he did challenge Dariusz. Roy's advisor Brad Jacobs, and Kerry Davis of HBO, tried to make the fight in America. But Dariusz's promoter, Peter Kohl, wasn't interested.

Roy also beat Tarver the first time, after losing muscle after coming back from HW.

You're so biased.

 

The Mongoose,

It would matter to any fighter during negotiations. Stop being silly.

He made no willingness to make the fight in 2002. In the live interview on HBO, he immediately started mocking Roy, and then expected 50/50.

Also, you obviously aren't aware of what was going on behind the scenes with Roy. Efforts were made to fight Frankie Liles and Dariusz M. A fight with Holyfield was almost made too.

When the fight with Dariusz couldn't be made, he continued to fight his mandatories. What else could he do?

We're going around in circles here.

Why is Roy getting the blame for the Hopkins rematch not coming off?

Why aren't you criticising Hopkins for wanting 50/50, when he'd lost to Roy, and Roy would had to have moved down?

Every fighter has different circumstances surrounding them.

Hopkins cleaned out the MW division after Roy had moved out and left the IBF behind.

Would he have cleared it out if Roy had've stayed?

No.

Yes, he was coming off of a great win over Tito.

He'd also had other good wins. But his title reign wasn't filled with stellar opposition.

No, there wasn't Dariusz hanging over his head.

Again, HBO tried to make that fight. They even came up with the idea of a double header to showcase Dariusz to the U.S. fans.

But despite what Dariusz claimed, he only wanted the fight in Germany.

Big fights can be hard to make.

What Calzaghe did to Roy was a joke.

The only embarrassment, was him signing for the fight, after telling everybody how he'd be disappointed to fight Roy, because he was so shot.

He wouldn't have gone near him in his prime.

But the point is, that link tells you all about Bernard Hopkins.

Now if what he said was understandable, then WHY the hell did he fight him 16 months later??

Bernard only fought Roy, when he knew he was done.

I can't believe how you've just brushed over that link.

 

If Roy had fought Collins and Dariusz etc, would you have said his resume was outstanding?

Again, the Dariusz fight was hard to make.

Steve Collins was a good fighter, who had very good wins over Eubank. But I don't give him a lot of credit for beating Benn. Benn was finished at that point, and had come out of retirement after losing to Malinga.

Yes, beating Collins would have been better than beating Paz.

But Roy left SMW when he couldn't unify at SMW. Liles turned down his biggest payday to fight Roy, which resulted in his manager - Jack O'Halloran, walking out on him.

[url]http://www.scaredstiffreviews.com/?p=414[/url]

A Benn fight was hard to make in the previous year, because of King wanting options on Roy. Roy's handlers - The Levin's, didn't want to sign Roy over to him.

So in the end, Roy's options were to fight Collins for a lightly regarded WBO title, or move up for a fresh challenge at LHW.

McCallum had seen better days. He was almost 40 and past his best. But fighting him for an interim title, was a gateway to bigger fights at LHW.

So that's the route that Roy chose.

Here's an interview with Roy just prior to his fight with Brannon, which was to be his last SMW fight before moving up to LHW.

[url]http://youtu.be/4TPjvtASn0c[/url]

 

If Jones stays at 168, he makes it look even easier then he did at 175. Who would have given him any credit then.

 

Exactly.

If he couldn't have fought Benn or Liles, but had stayed at SMW regardless, he'd have got criticised for not going up to LHW.

Look at Calzaghe at SMW.

He was faced with the same problem that Roy was faced with, because he couldn't get the Ottke fight.

But instead of moving up to LHW, he remained at SMW until he eventually unified four years later against Kessler.

Because of that, he's now credited with being the best SMW of all time.

 

That fight should have happened. McCallum was too much risk too little reward for Tommy to fight him. It's possible Hearns could have won a decision if he was able to move and box for 12 rounds without getting hurt. He would have to employ the Motor City Cobra style and not the Hitman style. McCallum was too skilled and too resilent for Hearn to walk through him.

 

One could just as easily say you are being biased.

 

-Yeah...lots of Roy fights that were "almost made" Your doing nothing but reinforcing my point that his career was frustrating after Toney because he couldn't deliever the big fights we wanted. Your just giving reasons for these fights happneing from a pro Roy Jones perspective. I've heard all this before, from both sides, and that wasn't what I was getting on about.

-My point is that these big fights didn't happen, so I'm not competely sure where Jones really sits as a H2H beast.

-A joke? Calzaghe didn't do nothing to Jones, that Jones didn't do to similar overmatched and aging opponents. That you take offense to that, tells me quite a bit about you.

-Bah, this sounds like a bunch of bitter pill nonsense. Your upset Hopkins beat Jones up in the old man rematch, and I could care less, not what I was talking about.

 

I answered your question.

 

Mongoose...I'm sure you agree on the deterioration factor if Jones had fought better competition. i mean the guy absorbed as little punishment as anyone.

And personally, I do not think asking a guy to absorb John Ruiz or Antonio tarver is not asking for much. Actually, below average is how I'd peg it.

but that stuff caused deterioration and he could not overcome it. Fighting better competition instead of the C graders--funny, those fights always got made. Must just be an oddball coincidence the no hopers and massive underdogs got in the ring with him & the tough competition did not.

Me, I think he deteriorates 3 to 5 years earlier and he was not a guy that took to sliding down the ladder elegantly. He was the fall of the ladder type, which I think me and yourself expected.