Retrospective: Toney vs Jones

I would say on middleweight and cruiserweight, as he beat the man in Nunn and Jirov.

Super middleweight, I would say no.

 

When there is an existing CHAMPION in the division yes that made the Ruiz win essentially worthless. Furthermore there wasn't at that point a champion at Cruiserweight not until nearly 2 years later when Bell unified the belts (for only the 2nd time in history) so Roy fighting any of those guys was much more excusable than handpicking a guy that had a belt that literally nobody (other than Roy Jones) wanted :roflatsch

Roy loved fighting for trinket belts. His career proves such as he was always happy to fight for a vacant or stripped belt. He even collected the meaningless IBA and WBF belts atsch

 

Good post but note that Hopkins was not undefeated before the RJJ fight. Hopkins is the only ATG I know of that lost his very first fight.

 

There are such things as quality wins over top contenders.

In fact, sometimes THE champion isn't the best fighter in the division.

 

Agreed. You gotta beat the man to be the man. :deal

Toney did that at middleweight and cruiserweight.

As a middlweight he beat Nunn and Mc Callum who were considered the best middlweights at the time. At cruiserweight, he beat Jirov who was considered the best cruiserweight at the time.

 

Steroids had a lot to do with his stint at cruiser and heavy imo.

 

In that scenario there is ZERO argument that Lennox Lewis was not THE champion. None. Roy by his refusal to fight DM we never knew if he was better than DM.

Another example was when Tyson unified the WBC, WBA, IBF belts. Spinks was THE champion not Tyson. Then it was settled when he and Tyson fought in 1988. Roy, was reluctant to prove he was THE champion by fighting DM. He also was reluctant to prove he was THE champion by fighting Lennox Lewis.

Those fights could have been made but were not. Jones had a pattern of doing this in EVERY single weightclass he fought in. This wasn't something that was just specific to one of the divisions he fought in.

I do agree that fighting Tarver was a much tougher test at the time then stopping off at Cruiserweight and fighting one of the 4 beltholders there. So yes I give him credit for that but in the end it would have been better for him to get a Cruiserweight belt or 2 or even stay at Heavyweight and try to unify or fight THE champion. I don't think many people would be critical of Roy if he were to get knocked out by Lennox, Vitali, Sanders, Brewster, Wlad, etc. No shame in that really. There is shame in getting sparked by Tarver, Johnson, Green, Lebedev, etc.

 

No one is arguing that Lennox was not THE champion..

But I don't agree that just because Lennox was the champ that a win over Ruiz is meaningless.

Roy started fighting at 154 for christ sakes.. To go on to hold a HW belt is a huge accomplishment.

 

Nobody wanted to fight Ruiz. Literally. Everyone wanted to fight Lennox because he was THE champion. That is why Roy was able to get the Ruiz fight nobody else cared about fighting him.

 

Well,why didn't Roy ever fight him again when he more than plenty opportunities? At higher weights Toney is the much better fighter. RJJ chose guys like Ruiz when Toney would've tapped that ass easily..

 

Do you think that is why other LHWs didn't move up to fight him? Because they didn't care about his belt?

 

Heavyweights didn't even care about wasting there time with him. Dr. Vitali Klitschko was #1 in the WBA and the WBC and chose to fight Lennox. Why? Because he was THE champion. Nobody wanted to fight Ruiz for his meaningless trinket belt. People didn't care about it.

 

Why did he need to? Toney had a chance at a rematch in 97 and lost to Griffin a second time.

 

He could of fought him after Ruiz when Toney was the cw champion

 

If Roy had won titles at MW, SMW, LHW, CW, and HW, would he be considered a top 10 ATG?