Roy Jones: How Good Was He?

Lets not forget that Manny's excuses that he was 60% came after the fight...

I believe Roy said before the Tarver fight that he was a 7 out of 10.

Why anyone wouldn't believe Roy struggled to make weight is beyond me.

 

Sorry I have only read the last two pages of this thread and am kind of jumping in.

I remember reading that Fitz was suspected of having loaded gloves vs. Jeffries, It makes me wonder, that's why I hate not having good footage of old school fighters, and it really was the wild west back then in boxing.

The wild west because Wyatt Earp was a ref.

 

His win over Hopkins was incredible.

He was a very, very good fighter.

 

Hopkins stopped ATG Trinidad.

I don't want to hear that BS that he was a blown up Welterweight. He was killing himself and going full skelator to make the welter limit.

Hopkins was a legend.

 

I read he actually had a power walking technique he would use to train.. Could you imagine how funny and odd that would have looked back then?

It is amazing to me to look at his photo and say that he was one of the most devastating punchers in boxing history. I watched most of the Corbett fight, it is crazy he stopped the HW champ with a body shot.

:good

This must have been what I read.

 

Absolutely.

I imagine the strongest then is close to the strongest today, but the average man today gets pis*ed on..

Laziness is a huge problem just with people I know here in America who don't even know a hard days work.

 

I took my son trout fishing the other day and got snagged up on a rock.. I decided to fight a strong current waist deep to get the line unhooked as it was really hot here. I woke up feeling like I ran a marathon.

I used to be in amazing shape too, but my Dad stressed upon me at a young age the importance of a firm handshake, and I hate it when grown men shake my hand like an old woman.:rofl

Sleep well tonight.:smoke

 

Tito was still a smaller fighter, though.


However, at the time Tito was the favourite to win that fight. Nothing should be taken away from Hopkins. It's only in hindsight that we realised it was never going to be Tito's fight and he should not have been favourite.

 

AnotherFan,

Sorry for the late reply.

Option 2 is merely speculation, and he worked with Mackie who's one of my the most respected sports strategists and nutritionists in the world. Mackie says that he built him up and stripped his body fat, similar to what he did with Michael Spinks in 1985.

But what do you class as a quick return though?

The specific examples from Zod's link, are where the bodybuilder and the powerlifter completely detrained. Again, Roy was never going to sign a contract, and then do nothing at all, just waiting for his body to change.

Since debating with Zod, it appears that Roy had three options:

1. To implement the method of complete detraining like the powerlifter.

2. To partially detrain, where he cut down his workload.

3. To work out in a fasted state.


Option 3, is the option that he went with, because the others weren't viable due to time constraints.

Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems to me that the problem you have is just the wording that Roy has used? Yes? But when he said he starved himself and did lots of running, he wasn't talking literally. He didn't literally starve himself completely and then run. He obviously just meant that he ran without hardly eating anything, and he'd starved his body of it's normal intake. When you work out in a fasted state, you eat very small amounts of food, and cut down on your protein. That's what working out in a catabolic rate entails.

Here's the link again:

http://fitnessblackandwhite.com/how-to-lose-muscle/


Below are two interviews. One is where Roy says that he starved himself, and the second one is Thomas Hauser's article for SecondsOut, where Roy has worded things slightly differently.

http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2004/may/10/boxing.comment

http://www.secondsout.com/columns/thomas-hauser/roy-jones-and-rj1


In my honest opinion, there should be no reason for you not to believe that he lost the muscle by doing fasted workouts. Again, he won the first fight with Tarver, so he had no reason to make any excuses.

Any excuses that he made afterwards, was just his pride and his ego talking, in my opinion.

He was looking at remaining at HW if a big money fight was available. But realistically, the only really big money HW fights out there, would have been against Evander, Tyson, and Lewis. He'd signed a $10m guarantee to fight Ruiz, but ended up taking home $15m + due to the PPV revenue. So to remain at HW, he wanted a lot more than that, which a Sanders fight wouldn't have brought. So after briefly contemplating it, he turned it down. Which in my opinion was the one of the best decisions he ever made in his career. It would have been a horrible match up for him stylistically, fighting a hard hitting, 6'4 southpaw. I think Sanders would have walked him down. The perfect fight fight for him was Tyson. Mike was finished at that point, but it would have generated mega money.

Who's the recognised champ?

The official weigh in for Ruiz was 193 pounds. But like I've mentioned, Roy went to Mackie already weighing 192 pounds, around 6 weeks earlier. So Mackie was shocked at the weigh in, and immediately complained to Marc Ratner who'd conducted the weigh in as the director of the Nevada State Athletic Commission. But they didn't get a chance to weigh in again, because Roy's trainer, Alton Merkerson, and Ruiz's manager, Norman Stone, had a scuffle. So Roy's official weight went down as 193 pounds. But Marc Ratner then re weighed Roy the following day on the same balance beam scales. Roy was clothed, and it registered 199 pounds. Thomas Hauser then reported it for SecondsOut, noting that he weighed 196 if you subtracted three pounds for his clothing.

But what we don't know, is what his exact weight was for the start of his camp for Tarver. We don't know his exact weight or his percentage of body fat. Alton Merkerson has said that Roy kept his Ruiz physique throughout the summer of 2003, in case a big money fight at HW had presented itself. But Zod has questioned that. So we're never going to agree. But I have no reason not to believe Merk. So in my opinion, Roy must have weighed somewhere in the 190's. But to tell you the truth, it probably wouldn't make any difference even if we had the exact figures to hand. Because Zod doesn't believe that Roy struggled to lose the weight, on the grounds of he told a reporter mid camp that everything was going great. Now that seems ridiculous to me, but he's entitled to his own opinion.


:good

 

Ha!

He was a character.