Roy Jones: How Good Was He?

I recently rewatched Roy Jones Jr vs John Ruiz. I think Ruiz was putting in a good effort, he didn't just stood back because Roy was countering. him. Good heart, good stamina good toughness. With a bit more power, he'd been a real danger. I'm not sure how I would rate him, but a good, legit HW in any case.

 

He was also the worst of the 4 heavyweight titlist available, and had the distinction of being beaten by 2 former middleweight champions.

 

:think

 

In any case, it was Roys first fight at HW. Going straight after a title holder is fairly bold no matter how you look at it. I would rather have seen him fight the best at LHW, but if he wanted to make some noise at HW, he honestly couldn't have fought Lennox Lewis or a Klitschko. They would have murdered him.

 

Okay, about this point. What are these risky fights again?

 

Roy didn't even make the heavyweight limit, he weighed in at 193 lb, if memory serves. So that's really a non-title fight between a cruiserweight and a heavyweight, and somehow Ruiz still managed to lose. That tells you how bad Ruiz is, not how good Roy is.

 

If you beat a champ, you beat a champ. Ruiz wasn't among the absolute best, but he beat some good comp, so there's no way he was ****.

 

My thoughts exactly.

He should have retired after the Ruiz fight. If he had, his legacy would be much better.

 

He actually beats Holyfield and Rahman, that's some serious resume.

 

Roy didn't duck hopkins. Hopkins was delusoinal about his worth. he turned down 6 million to fight jones because it wasn't an even split then went on to fight carl daniels for 1.3 million. Roy had nothing to prove, if Hopkins really wanted the fight he'd have taken it when Roy said "60/40 and I'll kick your ass". If someone offered me 6 times more money than I had ever made for any fight for a chance to avenge a loss, I'd be all over that ****.

 

way better than maywetaher!

 

That's right, he was decent.

At the time, nobody knew how effective Roy would be with the extra weight, and Ruiz was tough and outweighed him by over 30 pounds.

They were a few people such as Ron Borges, who thought that Roy had bitten off more than he could chew.

 

Risky fights he took:

Toney: Roy dropped his MW belt to go up and fight Toney at SMW, who was classed by many as the 2nd best fighter in the world at the time.

Ruiz: Again, Ruiz wasn't great. But he was tough, confident, and he weighed 220 plus pounds. Roy was 34, he'd had almost 50 fights, nobody knew how the weight would affect him, and we got to know shortly afterwards that he didn't possess a great chin. So any LHW who hasn't got a great chin, would be taking a risk fighting any top ten ranked HW.

Tarver: Roy burnt muscle in a short space of time to fight Tarver. He was still negotiating to fight HW's in the summer of 2003, and then he signed to fight Tarver in September, when a fight didn't materialise. The weight came off quick against the advice of Mackie Shilstone, to face an extremely motivated Tarver. Roy was exhausted after 8/9 rounds, and pulled out the win through sheer grit and determination. He should never have dropped down to LHW so fast. He put his body at risk, as well as his record and his reputation.

Calzaghe: Joe was an elite fighter, coming off of wins against Kessler and Hopkins. Roy was 3-3 in his last 6 fights, and was only 9 weeks away from his 40th birthday. He still had great hand speed, but his legs were no longer there, as well as his great reflexes that he had in his prime.

Lebedev: Lebedev's not a great fighter, but he's a big, young, hard hitting, southpaw CW who's tough. Roy fought him at 42, after having a year out of the ring, and did okay until being brutally knocked out in the final stages of the fight.


Fights that were unable to be made, that would have been risky:

Frankie Liles - 1996

Evander Holyfield - 1998 & 2003

Dariusz M - 2001

Bernard Hopkins - 2002

 

1. Toney: RJJ went up in weight to face the champ in Toney. He was the challenger and challenger is supposed to take risk, or else you won't get the belt. Nothing special here. The other 3 champs are Eubanks, Benn and Nunn, I think they're way riskier than Toney. Toney is P4P star and if RJJ won he got a huge boost and a lost won't matter much.
2. Ruiz: Fine then. But the other 3 heavyweight champs are riskier.
3. Tarver: The only truly risky fight he took and paid dearly for that.
4. Calzaghe, Lebedev: Fine but RJJ was way past his best and got to accept. Do you see him taking this kind of fight in his prime (1997-2003)?
Holyfield in 2003 are washed up, got schooled by Byrd and KO'ed by Toney, I don't think it a risky fight in anyway. The rest I don't have enough information to comment. So yeah, not that many risky fights right?

 

1. I agree, but you asked what risky fights he took, so I've listed them, with Toney being the first.

Eubank was the WBO champ and a fight between them was never viable at SMW.

I agree that Nunn would have been riskier, but he went on to lose to Frankie Liles just after Roy had beaten Toney, and Roy and HBO tried to make the Liles fight in 1996.

After his tragic fight with Gerald, Benn seemed to fade pretty fast. But according to Roy and HBO, he was also offered a fight in 1996, along with Collins, Nardiello, and Hopkins.


2. I agree with you.


3. Again, you asked the question, so I answered you. Tarver was a risk, and he fought him three times.


4. Of course. But the fights would had to have been of value to him. Not only was Joe not a big money fight back then, he didn't even fight in Roy's weight class. Joe was a great fighter, but he was relatively unknown in the U.S. until he'd beaten Lacy. So he brought nothing to the table, and couldn't even have been made a mandatory challenger.

A guy like Lebedev would have been easy work for Roy back in his prime.


5. Evander was obviously past his best in 2003, but I still believe there was an element of risk involved. There certainly would have been in 1998. Evander's former attorney Jim Thomas, has stated that Roy and his advisor at the time, Greg Fritz, went to Atlanta to meet him and Evander, to discuss a potential fight. Thomas says that they all had dinner together, and Evander respectfully turned down Roy's proposal, because at the time, he felt as though he was in a no win situation.